Working-Class Perspectives (2025)

04/09/2023

Biden's Labor Initiatives and Organizers' Challenges:
On this Labor Day, long-time organizer Wade Rathke sees reasons for hope in President Joe Biden's support for workers. Under Biden's administration, both the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor have made decisions that should help workers and make union organizing a bit easier. But as Rathke writes in Working-Class Perspectives, for these moves to make a real difference, organizers have to take advantage of new opportunities.
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Is Joe Biden, as he claims, the best friend workers have had in the White House either ever or since Franklin Delano Roosevelt? We could debate that all day, but the President and his administrati…

12/06/2023

How Their Silence Diminishes Us:
People from working-class backgrounds often feel like outsiders in college and in professional work. Knowing that they bring the ability, commitment, and insight to belong doesn't always translate into feeling at home. "Colleagues" who treat class as a joke and working-class people as losers don't help, and as Rin Baker writes in this week's Working-Class Perspectives, the injuries of class biases hit deeper when no one challenges them.
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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

30/05/2023

Representing Post-Industrial Communities in Culture:
Lived experience provides crucial insight into working-class culture and communities. Many of the best writing, film, music, and art about working-class life has been produced by people who grew up in the working class but then developed their skills through further education. In Working-Class Perspectives this week, Kenn Taylor discusses two examples from England, created by or in partnership with university-educated writers from the working class. We need voices like these, he writes, but he worries that younger working-class people today have limited opportunities for both the jobs and training to help make their voices heard. https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/
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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

01/05/2023

Time Is Not On Our Side:
Time is one of the most significant points of labor conflict. Workers fight for a say in how much we work, when we work, and where we work. Contingent labor and remote work have complicated struggles over time, as have ideas about burnout and self-care, which often pit workers against each other and even against themselves. And as Wade Rathke writes in this week's Working-Class Perspectives, conflicts over time involve power and capital, not just workers' health and well-being.
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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

17/04/2023

Class Ceilings:
The idea that anyone with talent and effort can get ahead is a core belief in the U.S. But as Allison L. Hurst writes in this week's Working-Class Perspectives, research makes clear that poor and working-class people face barriers -- a class ceiling -- even when they have acquired advanced degrees and professional positions. It's time to dismantle the myth of meritocracy, Hurst writes, and instead envision a more just and equitable society.
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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

10/04/2023

Working Ourselves to Death: Why Increasing the Retirement Age is Bad
While many observers have admired the spirit of activism that had French workers protesting recently, they might not understand why a 2-year increase in the retirement age inspired so much fury. But as Christopher R. Martin suggests in this week's Working-Class Perspectives, retirement is a class issue. While those who are well-off can afford to retire when they choose, the working class often cannot, so they bear more of the nation's labor burden. Next time the government moves to raise the retirement age, Martin argues, we should follow the French example and just say no.
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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

20/03/2023

Governor DeWine: It's Never Too Late to Do the Right Thing for Ohio's Workers:
While the pandemic seems to have eased, many working-class people continue to suffer an economic version of long COVID. Several Federal support programs have recently ended, but, as Marc Dann writes in this week's Working-Class Perspectives, some continuing support for workers remains -- as long as state leaders are willing to accept it. In Ohio, Dann writes, Governor Mike DeWine has refused 900 million dollars that could help struggling families as post-pandemic inflation, rising housing costs, and stagnant wages are pushing too many into economic straits.

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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

13/03/2023

Labor Spring 2023: Making Campuses Platforms for Labor Renewal
From maintenance staff to graduate assistants and faculty, more and more workers on campuses around the U.S. have been organizing to fight for better wages and conditions. And they are not standing alone. As Joseph A. McCartin writes in this week's Working-Class Perspectives, faculty, students, unions, and other supporters are planning teach-ins and rallies as part of Labor Spring, a national initiative to support ongoing current campaigns, build understanding of pivotal historical moments for workers, highlight racial and gender equity in the worker justice movement, and examine the crucial importance of this moment in labor’s history.
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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

03/03/2023

Why Veterans in Labor Should Not Be Ignored:
Media stereotypes of military vets present them as right-wing and often reactionary, but as Steve Early writes in this week's Working-Class Perspectives, that image ignores an important reality: working-class veterans are more likely to belong to unions than other workers. Veterans have led important labor battles, and, as Early's profiles of today's leaders makes clear, they are still fighting against the privatization of government services and for improving access for vets and others to higher education and health care.
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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

30/01/2023

Upward Mobility: Improving Conditions, Not Just Opportunities

The American dream centers on the ideal of upward mobility, but as Jack Metzgar writes in this week's Working-Class Perspectives, we can measure mobility in different ways. Even as some people move into a higher position relative to the population as a whole, if we look at people's absolute economic position, it's clear that more people are earning less and facing greater economic difficulties than their parents did. The answer, Metzgar argues, is not improving the opportunities for a few to move up. Instead, we need to improve the actual conditions for most people.
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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

23/01/2023

Fair Time Legislation Is Achievable, Not Just for Rail Workers But for Everyone
As last year's rail strike in the U.S. made clear, work time matters. Unlike most countries, the U.S. doesn't guarantee workers paid leave, but as Dorothy Sue Cobble writes in this week's Working-Class Perspectives, a fair time movement could change that -- and improve workers' lives in the process. To get there, she argues, we need to connect the long fight of the women’s movement to value family work with the labor movement’s equally long fight for shorter hours and more control over work time.

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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

16/01/2023

Loved and Lost: Working-Class People We Lost in 2022

While it might seem rather maudlin to start a new year by writing about death, the loss of favourite musicians, actors, and athletes reminds us of the pleasure they’ve given us. Some losses are especially important for working-class people, for whom entertainment is not just a source of pleasure but also of inspiration. In this week's Working-Class Perspectives, Sarah Attfield reflects on the inspiring lives of several of those we lost in the last year.

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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

09/01/2023

Not My President: The Rise of the Working Class and Decline of the Heroic CEO

2023 has begun, so American politicos are starting to talk about the 2024 presidential race. But as Christopher R. Martin notes in this week's Working-Class Perspectives, the next race might not include any CEOs. Rising resistance to workplace policies and lost faith in corporations ever to prioritize the good of people over profits makes working-class voters increasingly reject the idea that the country should be run like a business -- or by a business leader.
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In late November, Bob Iger returned to the post of chief executive officer of Disney. He had retired in 2020 after 15 years as the media megacorporation’s CEO, where he was hailed for the com…

30/12/2022

Accompanying Staughton:
Many media outlets end the year by remembering those we've lost. We haven't done that before at Working-Class Perspectives, but this year, the working class lost one of its most powerful advocates, Staughton Lynd. So we end 2022 with a special post as John Russo remembers his experiences working with Staughton. As Russo writes, the heart of Lynd's work was his belief in accompaniment, standing with others in battles that are not your own, helping them to keep fighting.

This piece will also appear in the January issue of Social Policy: Organizing for Social and Economic Justice.

Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

19/12/2022

A Working-Class Christmas Story Christmas:

Christmas movies are a staple of the holiday season, and like many things about the holiday, they often mix consumerism and family connections. In Working-Class Perspectives this week, Kathy M. Newman uses the now-classic American film A Christmas Story -- and a recently-released sequel -- to consider how class and capitalism get in the mix of holiday movie traditions.
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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

05/12/2022

Meeting Labor's Moment:
The last few years have seen increased labor activism and support for labor unions -- all good reasons to be hopeful about the labor movement. Yet, as Lane Windham writes in this week's Working-Class Perspectives, to see the path forward, we have to consider how the current social and economic order is different from what we've seen over the last few decades.
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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

28/11/2022

Which Side Are You On? Four Facts and Two Promising Prescriptions for Dampening Inflation

Some commentators have blamed rising inflation in the U.S. on increases in workers' wages, and the standard response is raising interest rates to dampen spending. As Mark G. Popovich argues in Working-Class Perspectives this week, the analysis and the response don't just ignore the facts. They amount to taking sides in the economic conflict between workers and the wealthy. Better analysis, he suggests, can point us to more just policies.
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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

14/11/2022

Waving the Red Away: Working-Class Mobilization:

Since the 2022 U.S. midterms, commentators have been debating why the Republicans' predicted "red wave" crashed, but as Ken Estey writes in Working-Class Perspectives this week, most are ignoring one factor: working-class mobilization. But as Estey argues, organizing and canvassing by union members, like the "Workers to the Front" campaign from UNITE HERE, made a difference in key states like Pennsylvania and Nevada.
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Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

Working-Class Perspectives

04/09/2023

12/06/2023

30/05/2023

01/05/2023

17/04/2023

10/04/2023

20/03/2023

13/03/2023

03/03/2023

30/01/2023

23/01/2023

16/01/2023

09/01/2023

30/12/2022

19/12/2022

05/12/2022

28/11/2022

14/11/2022

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