What Next for Labor Rights?  

What are the prospects for labor rights in the next four years? The question would seem to require some estimate, first, of what the Republicans intend and, second, of their capacity to do it. But current labor law is not …



Workers of the Diaspora  

Jewish Workers in the Modern Diaspora Nancy L. Green, ed. University of California Press, 1998, 256 pp., $14.95 Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York by Nancy L. Green Duke University Press, 1997 …





Holes in the ‘New Economy’  

Growing Prosperity: The Battle for Growth with Equity in the 21st Century by Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison Century Foundation, 2000, 345 pp., $25 Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison are two icons that progressive economists of my generation looked to …



Union Town  

Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II by Joshua B. Freeman The New Press, 2000, 393 pp., $35 I’m sitting here in sunny California poring over short-term rentals in downtown Manhattan. My wife stops short at a …





New Disciplines of Work and Welfare  

Four years after passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, many government and media reports have declared welfare reform a success. They measure success by reduction in the number of those receiving welfare checks and to some …







Prison Labor  

Just about every aspect of collegiate life can be leased for corporate profit these days. Increasingly, universities subcontract to large companies services they used to provide themselves; on campuses nationwide, corporate logos are becoming as ubiquitous as backpacks, as Barnes …



Labor Law Reform and Postindustrial Unionism  

The Clinton administration’s 1993 decision to establish a Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations has opened a far-ranging debate about the U.S. collective bargaining system. Organized labor generally argues that its priority should be strengthening workers’ rights to organize …









Supreme Court Sets Back Union Democracy  

In 1959, Congress passed the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), also known as the Landrum-Griffin Act, after extensive hearings into the corruption, dictatorship, and racketeering that existed in some major unions. The congressional goal, according to Senator McClellan, chairman …