The Fight for $15

The Fight for $15 PDF Author: David Rolf
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 1620971143
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
“Rolf shows that raising the minimum wage to $15 is both just and necessary, lest the American dream of middle class prosperity turn into a nightmare” (David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist). Combining history, economics, and commonsense political wisdom, The Fight for $15 makes a deeply informed case for a national fifteen-dollars-an-hour minimum wage as the only practical solution to reversing America’s decades-long slide toward becoming a low-wage nation. Drawing both on new scholarship and on his extensive practical experiences organizing workers and grappling with inequality across the United States, David Rolf, president of SEIU 775—which waged the successful Seattle campaign for a fifteen dollar minimum wage—offers an accessible explanation of “middle out” economics, an emerging popular economic theory that suggests that the origins of prosperity in capitalist economies lie with workers and consumers, not investors and employers. A blueprint for a different and hopeful American future, The Fight for $15 offers concrete tools, ideas, and inspiration for anyone interested in real change in our lifetimes. “The author’s plainspoken approach and stellar scholarship illuminate in-depth discussions about the deliberate policy decisions that began to decimate the middle class at the start of the 1980s as well as the insidious new ways in which big business continues to attack American workers today via stagnant wages, rampant subcontracting, unpredictable scheduling, and other detrimental practices associated with the so-called ‘share economy.’” —Kirkus Reviews “David Rolf has become the most successful advocate for raising wages in the twenty-first century.” —Andy Stern, senior fellow at Columbia University’s Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy

The Fight for $15

The Fight for $15 PDF Author: David Rolf
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 1620971143
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book Here

Book Description
“Rolf shows that raising the minimum wage to $15 is both just and necessary, lest the American dream of middle class prosperity turn into a nightmare” (David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist). Combining history, economics, and commonsense political wisdom, The Fight for $15 makes a deeply informed case for a national fifteen-dollars-an-hour minimum wage as the only practical solution to reversing America’s decades-long slide toward becoming a low-wage nation. Drawing both on new scholarship and on his extensive practical experiences organizing workers and grappling with inequality across the United States, David Rolf, president of SEIU 775—which waged the successful Seattle campaign for a fifteen dollar minimum wage—offers an accessible explanation of “middle out” economics, an emerging popular economic theory that suggests that the origins of prosperity in capitalist economies lie with workers and consumers, not investors and employers. A blueprint for a different and hopeful American future, The Fight for $15 offers concrete tools, ideas, and inspiration for anyone interested in real change in our lifetimes. “The author’s plainspoken approach and stellar scholarship illuminate in-depth discussions about the deliberate policy decisions that began to decimate the middle class at the start of the 1980s as well as the insidious new ways in which big business continues to attack American workers today via stagnant wages, rampant subcontracting, unpredictable scheduling, and other detrimental practices associated with the so-called ‘share economy.’” —Kirkus Reviews “David Rolf has become the most successful advocate for raising wages in the twenty-first century.” —Andy Stern, senior fellow at Columbia University’s Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy

Beyond $15

Beyond $15 PDF Author: Jonathan Rosenblum
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807098124
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
The inside story of the first successful $15 minimum wage campaign that renewed a national labor movement With captivating narrative and insightful commentary, labor organizer Jonathan Rosenblum reveals the inside story of the first successful fight for a $15 minimum wage, which renewed a national labor movement through bold strategy and broad inclusiveness. Just outside Seattle, an unlikely alliance of Sea-Tac Airport workers, union and community activists, and clergy staged face-to-face confrontations with corporate leaders to unite a diverse, largely immigrant workforce in a struggle over power between airport workers and business and political elites. Digging deep into the root causes of poverty wages, Rosenblum gives a blunt assessment of the daunting problems facing unions today. Beyond $15 provides an inspirational blueprint for a powerful, all-inclusive labor movement and is a call for workers to reclaim their power in the new economy.

The Sum of Us

The Sum of Us PDF Author: Heather McGhee
Publisher: One World
ISBN: 0525509585
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone—not just for people of color. WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, BookRiot, Library Journal “This is the book I’ve been waiting for.”—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist Look for the author’s podcast, The Sum of Us, based on this book! Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis of 2008 to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a root problem: racism in our politics and policymaking. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out? McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare. But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: the benefits we gain when people come together across race to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own. The Sum of Us is not only a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here but also a heartfelt message, delivered with startling empathy, from a black woman to a multiracial America. It leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game. LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL

Rising Up

Rising Up PDF Author: Bryan Evans
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780774864374
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Despite one of the highest rates of low-wage work in the West, Canada is home to a strong and storied labor movement. Rising Up traces the history of living wage activism in Canada and its battle against broken trade unions and dismantled safety nets. In a labor market characterized by inequality, instability, and austerity, the authors contend, the living wage movement must play a central role in our plans for a more equitable future.

No Shortcuts

No Shortcuts PDF Author: Jane F. McAlevey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190624728
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The crisis of the progressive movement is so evident that nothing less than a fundamental rethinking of its basic assumptions is required. Today's progressives now work for professional organizations more comfortable with the inside game in Washington DC (and capitols throughout the West), where they are outmatched and outspent by corporate interests. Labor unions now focus on the narrowest possible understanding of the interests of their members, and membership continues to decline in lockstep with the narrowing of their goals. Meanwhile, promising movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter lack sufficient power to accomplish meaningful change. Why do progressives in the United States keep losing on so many issues? In No Shortcuts, Jane McAlevey argues that progressives can win, but lack the organized power to enact significant change, to outlast their bosses in labor fights, and to hold elected leaders accountable. Drawing upon her experience as a scholar and longtime organizer in the student, environmental, and labor movements, McAlevey examines cases from labor unions and social movements to pinpoint the factors that helped them succeed - or fail - to accomplish their intended goals. McAlevey makes a compelling case that the great social movements of previous eras gained their power from mass organizing, a strategy today's progressives have mostly abandoned in favor of shallow mobilization or advocacy. She ultimately concludes that, in order to win, progressive movements need strong unions built from bottom-up organizing strategies that place the power for change in the hands of workers and ordinary people at the community level. Beyond the concrete examples in this book, McAlevey's arguments have direct implications for anyone involved in organizing for social change. Much more than cogent analysis, No Shortcuts explains exactly how progressives can go about rebuilding powerful movements at work, in our communities, and at the ballot box.

The Living Wage

The Living Wage PDF Author: Tony Dobbins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000448673
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
As wealth inequality skyrockets and trade union power declines, the living wage movement has become ever more urgent for public policymakers, academics, and – most importantly – those workers whose wages hover close to the breadline. A real living wage in any part of the world is rarely its minimum wage: it is the minimum income needed to cover living costs and participate fully in society. Most governments’ minimum wages are still falling short, meaning millions of workers struggle to cover their living costs. This book brings new, vital insights to the conversation from a carefully selected group of contributors at the forefront of this field. By juxtaposing advances across sectors and countries, and encompassing many different approaches and indeed definitions of the living wage, Dobbins and Prowse offer a rich tapestry of approaches that may inform public policy. By including the experiences and voices of those workers earning at, or near, the living wage alongside the opinions of leading experts in this field, this book is a pioneering contribution for public policymakers as well as students and academics of work and employment relations, public policy, organizational studies, social economics, and politics.

Jane Doe No More

Jane Doe No More PDF Author: M. William Phelps
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0762788402
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
In 1993, Donna Palomba was raped by a masked assailant in her own home. Yet, her story is more than a victim’s tale of physical and emotional recovery. It is a story of one woman’s hunt for justice while fending off attacks by institutions designed to defend and protect her—the police department, the local government, and a community clinging to an outrageous claim that Donna had invented the crime to cover up a sexual affair. From the night of the attack, the botched crime scene investigation, and the abuse as authorities attempted to close the case by discrediting her, Donna was left as a victim with no name and no identity. Meanwhile, there was one courageous detective, later to become chief of police, who broke a cops’ code of silence in the name of justice. As they fought on, a legal battle ensued after the Waterbury Police Department—now with media support—refused to let go of its allegations against her and admit wrongdoing. Finally, after eleven years of struggle, Donna learned the identity of her attacker from the chief of police, who explained that the DNA from the rape kit taken a decade ago had turned up a shocking match. In 2007, Donna Palomba was the subject of a special two-hour Dateline episode about her case. Suddenly, she was Jane Doe no more, launching the Jane Doe No More organization and becoming a promoter of the rights of women and victims of sexual assault. With the help of crime investigator and author M. William Phelps, this is her story.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism PDF Author: Shoshana Zuboff
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610395700
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 683

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Book Description
The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.

A History of America in Ten Strikes

A History of America in Ten Strikes PDF Author: Erik Loomis
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620971623
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Recommended by The Nation, the New Republic, Current Affairs, Bustle, In These Times An “entertaining, tough-minded, and strenuously argued” (The Nation) account of ten moments when workers fought to change the balance of power in America “A brilliantly recounted American history through the prism of major labor struggles, with critically important lessons for those who seek a better future for working people and the world.” —Noam Chomsky Powerful and accessible, A History of America in Ten Strikes challenges all of our contemporary assumptions around labor, unions, and American workers. In this brilliant book, labor historian Erik Loomis recounts ten critical workers' strikes in American labor history that everyone needs to know about (and then provides an annotated list of the 150 most important moments in American labor history in the appendix). From the Lowell Mill Girls strike in the 1830s to Justice for Janitors in 1990, these labor uprisings do not just reflect the times in which they occurred, but speak directly to the present moment. For example, we often think that Lincoln ended slavery by proclaiming the slaves emancipated, but Loomis shows that they freed themselves during the Civil War by simply withdrawing their labor. He shows how the hopes and aspirations of a generation were made into demands at a GM plant in Lordstown in 1972. And he takes us to the forests of the Pacific Northwest in the early nineteenth century where the radical organizers known as the Wobblies made their biggest inroads against the power of bosses. But there were also moments when the movement was crushed by corporations and the government; Loomis helps us understand the present perilous condition of American workers and draws lessons from both the victories and defeats of the past. In crystalline narratives, labor historian Erik Loomis lifts the curtain on workers' struggles, giving us a fresh perspective on American history from the boots up. Strikes include: Lowell Mill Girls Strike (Massachusetts, 1830–40) Slaves on Strike (The Confederacy, 1861–65) The Eight-Hour Day Strikes (Chicago, 1886) The Anthracite Strike (Pennsylvania, 1902) The Bread and Roses Strike (Massachusetts, 1912) The Flint Sit-Down Strike (Michigan, 1937) The Oakland General Strike (California, 1946) Lordstown (Ohio, 1972) Air Traffic Controllers (1981) Justice for Janitors (Los Angeles, 1990)

We Want to Go to School!

We Want to Go to School! PDF Author: Maryann Cocca-Leffler
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
ISBN: 080753515X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
A Junior Library Guild Selection February 2022 The true story of the people who helped make every public school a more inclusive place. There was a time in the United States when millions of children with disabilities weren't allowed to go to public school. But in 1971, seven kids and their families wanted to do something about it. They knew that every child had a right to an equal education, so they went to court to fight for that right. The case Mills v. Board of Education of the District of Columbia led to laws ensuring children with disabilities would receive a free, appropriate public education. Told in the voice of Janine Leffler, one of the millions of kids who went to school because of these laws, this book shares the true story of this landmark case.