stillness is a lie, my dear
One class of workers tends to dominate discussions about class war in San Francisco: Those in the technology industry. By extension, when people discuss issues like displacement, rising costs of living, and other issues that the tech industry contributes to, they reference other workers — but unless you’re reading labour journalism, these workers all tend […]
So, ‘wealth therapy.’ Let’s talk about it, because it’s become the subject of a number of trend pieces, and at the same time that it makes me want to crack up and spit out my tea, it also makes me want to cry, because it’s emblematic of so much that is wrong with this country. […]
16 million children in the United States are currently living in poverty. That’s 22 percent of US children. 18 million women in the United States are currently living in poverty. That’s one in seven. Neither of these figures has been adjusted for race (people of colour are more likely to live in poverty), disability status […]
Friend and colleague Somer Sherwood recently shared an interesting article that I’ve been mulling over ever since — it is, on its face, a straightforward tale of economic and financial planning. But it’s also more than that. It’s about family, and the collective bonds of people (related or otherwise) willing to work together to support […]
Things have changed very dramatically on Treasure Island since I lived there. The former naval base has gone from a source of cheap, albeit slightly dodgy, housing surrounded by decaying infrastructure to an increasingly gentrified neighbourhood. Before, there was a strange sense of camaraderie among those of us willing to live in a part of […]
Earlier this year, the Bureau of Economic Research published a paper about the obesity epidemic(TM) and the growing threat it poses to the pursuit of happiness, national security, and not looking at gross ugly fat people in public. Just kidding, the story was about changes in the BMI. The multivariable study considered 27 state-level factors […]
Companies in the US are always coming up with new and creative ways to torment their workers and circumvent the law to avoid accountability for it. In recent years, they’ve undergone a forced shift, as critics of abusive corporate policies have called firms to heel for a growing number of violations, with minimum wage in […]
One of the most poorly-understood aspects of unions in the workplace is the closed shop versus open shop dynamic. This is not coincidental — unionbusters very much want to sow the seeds of confusion here. In a closed shop, all employees must be members of the union, joining within a certain amount of time when […]
‘Well, if they’d rather buy cheap crap from Walmart than healthy organic food,’ he said, leaning over and glaring furiously, ‘that’s their problem.’ I was somewhat taken aback by the vehemence, and I struggled to come up with an adequate response. Somehow the conversation had gone from zero to extremely tense in about three seconds, […]
The last few years have been witness to an explosion of grassroots labour organising focused on improving conditions for retail, fast food, and other service workers. This is a huge step in a country where workers in general have to fight for every inch of respect they receive, and where unions are struggling against the […]