Many of the reasons for strikes now – low compensation, technological change, job insecurity and safety concerns – mirror the motives that workers had for walking off the job in decades past.
A migrant worker picks crabs in Hoopers Island, Maryland.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
A strike would shake up the auto industry, even though both the union’s ranks and the share of the US automotive market controlled by GM, Ford and Stellantis have been shrinking for decades.
Minor league players often endure lengthy bus trips.
Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Luc Bovens, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
At the height of Reaganism, close to half of Americans believed a phrase popularized by Karl Marx actually derived from the US Constitution. It doesn’t, but scholars have traced it to the Bible.
Doing a job to help other people can give greater meaning to work.
Photo by Eddie Kopp for Unsplach
Jeffrey Hirsch, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
If your job doesn’t currently involve automation or artificial intelligence in some way, it likely will soon. Computer-based worker surveillance and performance analysis will come, too.
Salvadoran immigrants were pivotal in the Justice for Janitors campaign in Los Angeles in 1990. It earned wage increases for custodial staff nationwide and inspired today’s $15 minimum wage campaign.
AP Photo/Chris Pizzello
Central Americans who came to the US in the 1980s fleeing civil war drew on their background fighting for social justice back home to help unionize farmworkers, janitors and poultry packers in the US.
Fighting for a $15 an hour wage in Pittsburgh.
AP Photo/Keith Srakocic
Thomas Kochan, MIT Sloan School of Management; Duanyi Yang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Erin L. Kelly, MIT Sloan School of Management et Will Kimball, MIT Sloan School of Management
Americans want more say about their benefits, training and other important issues at work.
Specialized training is becoming more and more important to financial success in today’s labor market.
U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Michael Ellis
As technology and the labor market rapidly evolve, so too does the value of a high school diploma. Despite the changes, one thing remains true: Education is still the cornerstone of career success.
Several studies have shown that health suffers after being laid off, as fear and anxiety lead to stress.
VGstockstudio/Shutterstock.com
The negative effects of job loss have been well-documented and fairly well-understood. But why would studies also suggest that health improves during a recession? The reasons may surprise you.
Future robots will work side by side with humans, just as they do today.
AP Photo/John Minchillo
Rather than fret about how many jobs future technologies will destroy, we should focus on how to shape them so that they complement the workforce of tomorrow.
The first Labor Day was hardly a national holiday. Workers had to strike to celebrate it.
Frank Leslie's Weekly Illustrated Newspaper's September 16, 1882
The holiday began as a strike against excessive workweeks but now bears little resemblance to its worker-centric origins, even as the founders’ gains are slowly lost.
Robots can also lend a hand of sorts.
Photographee.eu/Shutterstock.com
Robots have the potential to help support a growing population that wants to age in their own homes. But those helpful machines won’t be the humanoid butlers of science fiction.
Jimmy John’s tried to stop its workers from toiling for other sandwich makers.
AP Photo/David Goldman
Nearly one in five employed Americans is bound by a contract restricting moves to rival companies. Here’s one way to make those arrangements less common.
The 5,000-strong pro-union march in March suggested labor support in Canton is growing.
AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
Although workers at a Nissan auto plant in Mississippi rejected a proposal to join the United Auto Workers Union, organized labor has reason to be optimistic about its future.
Emeritus Chair, Human Dimensions of Environmental Systems, Professor Emeritus in Political Science, Natural Resources and Environ Science; Avril Shull Professor Emeritus, Purdue University., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign