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Articles on Labor history

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Striking members of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union in New York City in 1958. AP Photo

Waves of strikes rippling across the US seem big, but the total number of Americans walking off the job remains historically low

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.
Lewis Wickes Hine, ‘A little spinner in a Georgia Cotton Mill, 1909.’ Gelatin silver print, 5 x 7 in. The Photography Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (P545)

The US has a child labor problem – recalling an embarrassing past that Americans may think they’ve left behind

While Lewis Hine’s early-20th century photographs of working children compelled Congress to limit or ban child labor, the US Department of Labor is now under fire for failing to enforce these laws.
These boys working in a Georgia cotton mill were photographed in 1909. Lewis Hine/The National Child Labor Committee Collection via Library of Congress

Abolishing child labor took the specter of ‘white slavery’ and the job market’s near collapse during the Great Depression

More than a fifth of US children were working in 1900, and many Americans saw nothing wrong with that. It took decades of activism and court battles plus economic upheaval to change course.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Walmart CEO Doug McMillon at a White House press conference joining government and corporate officials – but no representatives of workers. AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Workers left out of government and business response to the coronavirus

If government and business collaborate with workers, a scholar of labor relations writes, current economic problems could get less severe, the recovery smoother and lasting prosperity more likely.
Jimmy John’s tried to stop its workers from toiling for other sandwich makers. AP Photo/David Goldman

How noncompete clauses clash with US labor laws

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.
Back in the 1930s, people like this pear peddler in New York City’s Lower East Side often got their news from labor-led media. AP Photo

The backstory behind the unions that bought a Chicago Sun-Times stake

The newspaper’s new owners harken back to a tradition of labor-led media in the early part of the 20th century, which represented a bulwark against corporate power.

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