Like many things in the world, this blog has been lost in the vortex of the coronavirus. I just logged back into my account to see that my last post was from the uncertain days at the start of the lockdown, before we really had a sense of how long this would last. Although I…
On April 2, I took part in a live-streamed discussion on the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic for workers. The event was sponsored by McGill University’s Alumni Association, and featured myself in dialogue with Christopher Ragan, Director of McGill’s Max Bell School of Public Policy, and Chair of Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission. You can find…
On the eve of the Super Tuesday primaries, I spoke with Radio-Canada about what a Bernie Sanders presidency would mean for the East of Canada.
On February 11, 2020, I had the honor of moderating a community forum in downtown Montreal around the theme of “Transform Your Workplace, Save the Planet.” It was held at St. Jax’s Community Centre on rue Ste. Catherine. The forum brought together a fascinating panel of speakers from the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Green…
The core problem for Marxists is that unions occupy a paradoxical place in socialist strategy. On the one hand, they are essential for creating the collective working-class actor that is necessary to bring about socialism. On the other hand, by their very form they presuppose the continued existence of capitalism, given their primary focus on negotiating wages, benefits, and working conditions with capitalists.
I recently published a piece in Jacobin offering a sober assessment of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa’s legacy. He was a household name in his prime when he was heading up the Teamsters Union, and even today remains one of the best-known labor leaders in the U.S. He’s been on people’s minds more recently thanks to Martin Scorsese’s film The Irishman.
I was happy to see Shaun Richman’s generous review of my book in The Progressive. A longtime labor activist, writer, and now Program Director of the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies at SUNY Empire State College, Richman brought to the review his many years of experience grappling directly with the kinds of challenges that I address in the book.
On March 29, 2019, Suzi Weissman and I sat down for an in-depth interview around the theme of “Labor, Socialism, and the Struggle for Power,” at a meeting sponsored by the Los Angeles chapter of Democratic Socialists of America. The interview was taped for Suzi’s long-running “Beneath the Surface” show on KPFK 90.7 FM Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles.
On January 25, the Washington Post published a piece of mine on the recently-concluded Los Angeles teachers’ strike. While it was certainly a decisive victory for the members of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the LA teachers’ union, it also has broader implications for the US labor movement more broadly—particularly in light of last year’s Supreme Court…
On December 27, 2018, I had the chance to sit down with Jacob White of Heartland Labor Forum to talk about my book. HLF is a weekly radio show on KKFI 90.1 FM in Kansas City, Missouri that was founded by the Worker Education and Labor Studies Program at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. While…
I recently received one of those e-mails that we as professors dream of receiving: an e-mail from a student asking for reading recommendations to get better acquainted with my chosen field of study. In my case, this involved introducing my student to the world of comparative-historical sociology.
To mark the Labor Day holiday, I wrote a piece for the Washington Post taking stock of the current state of the US labor movement, and thinking of what its past can tell us about the road ahead. While unions have taken a beating over the past several decades, this Labor Day is somewhat different in…
