In These Times

Most Recent Articles view all 79

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  • 19 Mar 10

  School Grounds as Battlefield: Political Lessons at an Arabic-themed School

  By Michelle Chen In 2007, New York City public schools were poised to break new cultural ground. The… more

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  • 18 Mar 10

  Sick and Tired, But Still Standing: Ground Zero Workers Weigh a Settlement

  By Michelle Chen For months, they toiled in a hellish wasteland of dust and rubble, where a towering… more

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  • 12 Mar 10

  Injustice by the Pound: Farm Activists Work to ‘Bust Up Big Ag’

  By Michelle Chen Something is astir in America's heartland. A grassroots coalition of independent farmers, consumer groups, and… more

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  • 10 Mar 10

  When the Truth Hurts: Intelligence Agencies vs. Whistleblower Protections

  By Michelle Chen For over a decade, Bassem Youssef had distinguished himself as one of the FBI's top… more

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  • 03 Mar 10

  Young People Wait Out the Recession…and Their Youth

  By Michelle Chen Young workers may not know it, but the jobs crisis threatens to turn what should… more

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  • 26 Feb 10

  Is Unemployment Killing Us? Workers in Critical Condition

  By Michelle Chen The recession has left millions of Americans sick and tired of being sick and tired...… more

Latest Comments view all 4

• • 30 Dec 09
  • 11:12 pm

  Your first points are well taken. But this post is not suggesting that anyone roll over and die, or even "meekly accept" any alternative workweek proposal. It is asking readers to rethink how and why the workweek has changed over time along with the economy and labor market. Regardless of what particular configuration of hours and days works for an individual or even an entire sector, it's hard to say that there is anything static or eternal about the 8-hour days and 5-day weeks, and as your historical example shows, an organized movement can advance another system that better serves workers' …

  Posted to What If the Daily Grind Were Just Four Days A Week?

• • 22 Dec 09
  • 9:28 pm

  Thanks. You identify an interesting tension between local union interests and low-wage workforce in general. Maybe the answer to this problem is best pursued through another question: are you saying the union explicitly chose to put aside the living wage issue in order to push this development through? And if so, was the opposition to the living wage a matter of political pragmatism, or is there an ideological reason that organized labor would line up on the business side of this debate? More broadly, are there other ongoing labor struggles in New York City that meet the union's vision of a …

  Posted to Urban Communities Seek Lift Through Living Wage

• • 01 Sep 09
  • 5:07 pm

  Thanks for your comments on the Southern Poverty Law Center's survey. The paraphrasing of the findings stated exactly what the SPLC did--that according to the survey, eight in ten respondents *reported* experiencing the theft of their wages. Your points are well taken, though. One could, and should, interrogate the methodology used. Neither the post nor the SPLC argues that they were unbiased (they are an advocacy group after all) or that they drew from a comprehensive randomized sample. The report, in fact, is largely qualitative and based on interviews and media accounts. An academically rigorous piece of social science research? I …

  Posted to Four Years After Katrina, Workers Still Exploited in the Big Easy

• • 04 Sep 09
  • 12:49 am

  Thanks, Richard. Regardless of political leanings (or the views of the Better Business Bureau, for that matter), many who follow this issue do note an extreme lack of comprehensive data and statistics about this workforce, which makes this report, among others, worth looking at. And again, I could reiterate what the post's paraphrasing of the report does and does not imply, but, I think readers at this point can turn to the sources and judge for themselves.

  Posted to Four Years After Katrina, Workers Still Exploited in the Big Easy