New York State and California have both created commissions to study the possibility of reparations to African Americans for the legacy of slavery and post-Civil War segregation and racism. The California commission has already recommended direct payments of over a million dollars to eligible state residents. On the federal level, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) introduced legislation in the U.S. Congress to create a Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, and Representative Cori Bush (D-MS) is promoting a bill al ..read more

Introduction:  An injury to one is an injury to all. Motto of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. ILWU demonstrators at the Vancouver, Washington, 2013–2014 lockout in the Northwest grain industry. Credit: Dawn DesBrisay. In the past four decades, the American labor movement has seen dwindling union membership and incessant threats from corporations and government along with rightwing anti-union activists seeking to eliminate collective bargaining and other worker rights protected by union membership. This recent labor history proves instructive in understanding today’s seem ..read more

You received your PhD in 1990 from Yale University, where you studied under David Montgomery, one of the founders of the “New Labor History.” What brought you to the field? My roots were originally in British and European history. Labor history was very vibrant in Europe, and I did a master’s degree at the University of Cambridge where I studied with scholars like Gareth Stedman Jones and John Barber, but also Zara Steiner on foreign relations history. Just through happenstance I started studying Welsh miners and the Communist Party in the 1930s, and wrote a thesis on that topic. My focus on ..read more

A significant source for “Science as Routine” (available for free for the next three months) in the recent issue of Labor on history and the history of science are the annual reports of the Bureau of Science, an apparatus of the American colonial government in the Philippines. In these reports, the Bureau’s director reported the accomplishments of the scientific agency, described the activities of each division, and provided recommendations to maximize the resources allocated to them by the colonial state. The reports furnished various kinds of data, from the budget allotted to specific inve ..read more

On February 28, my contract faculty colleagues and I won our union, Contract Faculty United – UAW. My colleagues and I voted 553-72 to unionize and form the largest union for full-time, non-tenure track faculty any U.S. private school, by a margin of hundreds. That’s 88% of voters voting for their union, and a turnout of 67%. I basically gave my sabbatical last year to my union. Helping to organize a union is the best and most important thing I’ve ever done, probably ever will do. “Full-time, continuing contract faculty” is the name New York University gives to a group that other universities ..read more

In this interview, labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein speaks with Salem Elzway (USC) and Jason Resnikoff (Univ. of Groningen), co-authors of the article “Whence Automation: The History (and Possible Futures) of a Concept” published in Labor’s recent special issue on Labor and Science. Beginning with the authors’ definition of the “automation discourse,” a phenomenon usually associated with the high tide of American Fordist production during the 1940s and 1950s, in the first part of the interview Nelson asks Salem and Jason to reflect on how employers might have wielded it in other times and ..read more

The conversations eventuating in the current “Labor and Science” special issue of Labor began almost three years ago to the day. Lissa Roberts and Alexandra Hui, editors of History of Science and Isis respectively, had noticed that scholars in their subfield were increasingly interested in labor, and they wondered if labor historians were giving any thought to science in turn. When they asked me, my instinctive “no” was not only too quick, but it might easily have derailed this newest issue of Labor as well as a companion special issue of History of Science and a focus section in Isis. Rece ..read more

In recognition of Women’s History Month, I offer the following excerpt from my recently published book, What Work Is. The book is built around six-word essays written by adult workers who were prompted in my labor education class to complete the statement “Work is …” The excerpt features the reflections of Cindia “Lynn” Fields from Southern Illinois. Bob Bruno with his mother and father, circa 1958. Credit: Bob Bruno I’ve reflected a lot on the absence of a genuine career choice in my mother’s life. She stopped dreaming about being a flight attendant and later in life became a responsible a ..read more

I am deeply pleased that Labor has published a review of my interactive digital installation, On Equal Terms: gender & solidarity, and that Duke University Press is allowing free access to Sharon Szymanksi’s essay about the website: “On Equal Terms: gender & solidarity by Susan Eisenberg”. On Equal Terms website. Credit: Susan Eisenberg Sharon Szymanski’s thorough and thoughtful review, “On Equal Terms: gender & solidarity by Susan Eisenberg” provides historical background to the digital installation and practical suggestions for its classroom use. As a professor of labor studies ..read more

Remembering Ludlow, by Leigh Campbell-Hale On November 21, 1927, twenty Colorado strike policemen shot into a crowd of 500 men, women, and children in the company town of Serene built around the Columbine coalmine, killing six striking coalminers and wounding dozens of protestors (the exact number is disputed to this day). Within days, this violence became known as the Columbine Massacre. It was the turning point of the 1927-1928 statewide coal strike led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Today, the Columbine Massacre site is buried, literally, under a landfill. The landscaped wes ..read more