factory workers

Stars of the movie about an iconic Mattel toy are on strike. Both the company’s history and Barbie’s plot illuminate how powerful corporations really are.

The historical record says we shouldn’t be surprised.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, many labor regulations in the US have been crafted with the express purpose of strengthening the male-breadwinner family.

America’s utopian communities have traditionally promoted egalitarianism and alternatives to capitalism. Company towns do the opposite.

The unlikely, true story of the Westinghouse “We Can Do It” work-incentive poster that became an international emblem of women’s empowerment.

The initial promise of Mexican factories in the 1960s gave way to impoverished communities and capital flight in search of higher profits.

The partnership between rabbis and labor that delivered the two-day weekend.

Lee's life and work suggested that Asian American identity did not possess—and did not need—any underlying reality beyond solidarity.

The late socialist writer's first book was a deep exploration of how the US labor movement became so weakened.

Theresa Malkiel fled persecution in Russia and ended up in a New York sweatshop.

A six-hour workday could have become the national standard during the Great Depression. Here's the story of why that didn't happen.

On the rise and fall of radium in the beauty industry.

Lewis Hine captured the misery, dignity, and occasional bursts of solidarity within US working-class life in the early twentieth century.

1915 marked the beginning of the largest domestic migration in American history. Hundreds of thousands of Black Americans began relocating north.

Protecting the food supply chain means protecting workers.

The dark history of how coffee took over the world.

Emma Tenayuca and the San Antonio Pecan Shellers Strike of 1938.

How immigrants established vibrant communities in the rural South over a quarter-century.

Ed Ayers visits the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and learns how public outcry inspired safety laws that revolutionized industrial work nationwide.

The shuttering of the GM works in Lordstown will also bury a lost chapter in the fight for workers’ control.