#labor-rights

#labor-rights

At the end of Émile Zola's 1890 novel La Bête humaine, a runaway train careens through the night, an "escaped monster" of astonishing force that advances toward "the future in spite of all, heedless of the blood that might be spilt." Zola's was one of the first novels to seriously consider the social and cultural ramifications of the train, which had yanked Europe into the industrial age and facilitated a great migration of workers from the country to the city.

On February 7, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture in Riverside, California, inaugurated a show I curated: Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966 to 2026. The largest exhibition ever mounted by The Cheech, it includes some 150 works by 45 photographers based across the United States. The exhibition and accompanying publication also represent the first comprehensive survey of this history, one that spans six decades, beginning with a pioneering generation of photographers who chronicled the Chicano civil rights movement in the Southwest.

On May 1, 1886, hundreds of thousands of American workers walked off the job in protest of an eight-hour workday. In Chicago, these eight-hour workday protests culminated in the Haymarket Affair, when police sought to break up a rally near Haymarket Square, and a bomb was detonated in the process. The trial and martyrdom of the eight anarchists who were indicted, charged, and executed led to the formation of a day to recognize the labor struggle.

In 1965, the farmworkers who picked America's grapes lived in some of the harshest conditions in the country - paid below the minimum wage, housed in labor camps without running water, and denied the right to unionize.

The farmworkers who feed all of us should be able to also feed themselves and their families with the wages they make. Instead, this administration is unlawfully cutting their wages and transferring billions from workers to employers. We need to do what is right for our farmworkers and stop these wage cuts.

Drivers were delivering packages in deadly heat with no air conditioning; part-time employees, the majority of UPS' workforce, have been unable to receive benefits. Wages aren't rising at the same rate as the cost of living.

"This company is one of the richest companies in the world, and the wage increases that they're offering simply just don't keep up with the economy and the high cost of living," says Kim Cordova, president of the union that represents JBS workers in Greeley.

Despite working 40 hours during a blizzard at the higher pay rate, Jackson was compensated at the lower rate of $19.14 for only eight hours.

"Collective bargaining has been the fastest and most effective way for the regulation of AI technology," SAG-AFTRA Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland stated, emphasizing the union's role in shaping AI usage in Hollywood.

I have been working 24-hour shifts for 16 years, and it has ruined my health. There is no such thing as a 24-hour workday anywhere in the world, and it must stop immediately.

In these turbulent years, democracy was tested by war, pandemic, and violence driven by conflicts over race, immigration, and labor rights. In American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis, legendary historian Adam Hochschild brings this moment vividly to life, revealing both the repression that darkened the era and the Americans who struggled to repair a fractured nation.

The Chilean players' association officially became a union in December, and its president, Javiera Moreno, believes there needs to be women's representation in players' unions around the world. We want this movement to become massive, says the former Universidad Catolica captain. Our goal is to spread this to other countries. I don't know if in other places the path will be to have a specific union for women. This was needed here, but I think there needs to be at least representation of women's players within every country's footballers' union.

San Francisco sits at the center of the wealth inequality gripping the country, a place where fortunes scale at historic speed while the gap between those who produce value and those who capture it continues to widen. As I reflect on my own NFL career and life playing the game that will light up screens for more than 100 million Americans this weekend,

But beyond their sky-high resale price, the viral collectibles may come with a steep humanitarian cost as well. As The Guardian reports, New York-based labor rights group China Labor Watch (CLW) has accused the toys' maker, Chinese toy manufacturer Pop Mart, of employing 16- and 17-year-olds without offering them the necessary labor protections required by Chinese law. The group also alleges that these young workers aren't given adequate health and safety training, among other labor rights violations at the company's factory in Jiangxi province.

According to H&M, the digital twins will initially appear in social media posts, clearly marked with watermarks to indicate their AI origin, in compliance with platform guidelines on Instagram and TikTok that require disclosure of AI-generated content.

Remote employees living out of state are the exception, not the rule. According to data from the Vermont Department of Human Resources, the state workforce is now distributed more broadly across all fourteen counties than it was prior to the pandemic when employment was heavily concentrated in Washington and Chittenden counties. That shift hasn't weakened public service; it has spread it.