Labor

Market Basket’s Fair Deal

Market Basket is as indispensable in working-class towns as it is in gentrifying and well-off neighborhoods.

  • Simon Waxman

How Changes in the Workplace Have Reinforced Pay Inequality

The American workplace increasingly rewards (and expects) long hours.

  • Claude S. Fischer

On the Job: Debating Sex Work

Sex work may be a profession, but that doesn’t make it a source of empowerment.

  • Michaele L. Ferguson

Studying the Rich

Thomas Piketty dismantles received economic wisdom on inequality—including the idea that it is necessary for a rising tide to lift all boats.

  • Mike Konczal

7 Bipartisan Reasons to Raise the Minimum Wage

It's only fair, and other reasons why voters on all sides should agree.

  • Mike Konczal

How Finance Gutted Manufacturing

Since the 1980s, financial market pressures have driven companies to hive off activities that sustained manufacturing.

  • Suzanne Berger
with responses from
  • Dean Baker
  • Dan Luria & Joel Rogers
  • Dan Breznitz
  • Gary Herrigel
  • Susan N. Houseman
  • Mike Rose
  • Nichola Lowe
  • J. Phillip Thompson
  • Catherine Tumber
  • David Weil

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Lost Radicals

The internationalism of black radicals was an alternative to a universalism that wasn’t universal.

  • Eric Mann

Job Openings

Today’s high unemployment isn’t a result of a lack of skilled labor but rather a slow recovery.

  • Paul Osterman
  • Andrew Weaver

Ages and Wages

Older Americans Are Earning More than Ever

  • Gary Burtless

The Promise and Limits of Private Power

Richard M. Locke at the Watson Institute

  • Richard M. Locke

Can Global Brands Create Just Supply Chains?

Private efforts to improve global working conditions have failed.

  • Richard M. Locke
with responses from
  • Isaac Shapiro
  • Tim Bartley
  • Jodi L. Short & Michael W. Toffel
  • Gary Gereffi
  • Hannah Jones
  • Pamela Passman
  • Drusilla Brown
  • Aseem Prakash
  • Layna Mosley

The Leisure Gap

Why Don’t Americans Take Vacations?

  • Claude S. Fischer

Good Jobs

Three Reasons There Aren’t More

  • Paul Osterman

No Parties, No Banners

The Spanish experiment with direct democracy.

  • Gianpaolo Baiocchi
  • Ernesto Ganuza

Can Apple Shape Up?

Examining the global supply chains and labor practices of the high-tech industry.

  • Dara O’Rourke
  • David V. Johnson

The Promise of Ethical Consumption

An Ideas Matter event held at MIT on November 3, 2011

  • Dara O’Rourke
  • Scott Nova
  • Richard Locke
  • Jens Hainmueller

Citizen Consumer

A small percentage of consumers have already moved a portion of the market toward more sustainable practices. But the larger promise of ethical consumption remains unmet.

  • Dara O’Rourke
with responses from
  • Scott Nova
  • Juliet B. Schor
  • Lisa Ann Richey & Stefano Ponte
  • Scott E. Hartley
  • Margaret Levi
  • Auret van Heerden
  • Andrew Szasz
  • Richard M. Locke

Winning the Future

Should political scientists care more about politics?

  • Archon Fung

Protective Bargaining

How to Prevent the Labor Wars

  • Thomas A. Kochan

Back to Full Employment

It is fundamental to building a decent society—and we can get there.

  • Robert Pollin
with responses from
  • Reihan Salam
  • James K. Galbraith
  • Ruy Teixeira
  • Eileen Appelbaum
  • Andrew P. Morris & Roger E. Meiners
  • Lane Kenworthy
  • Jayati Ghosh
  • Michael J. Piore

Mothers Who Care Too Much

Stay-at-home mothering is bad for mothers, their kids, and women’s equality.

  • Nancy J. Hirschmann
with responses from
  • Shannon Hayes
  • Robin West
  • Lisa Dodson
  • Melody Berger
  • Ann Friedman
  • Mona Harrington
  • Lane Kenworthy
  • Anne L. Alstott

God’s Work

What can faith-based activism do for labor?

  • Nancy MacLean

Trading Up

Are Latin American populists creating something new that might temper or replace market mechanisms?

  • Michael J. Piore
  • Andrew Schrank

Organizing the Unorganizable

The unlikely spark for a rebirth of labor

  • Ruth Milkman
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