US History of Labor - Industrial Revolution
The laissez-faire capitalism, which dominated the second half of the 19th century & fostered huge concentrations of wealth & power, was backed by a judiciary which time and again ruled against those who challenged it.
The laissez-faire capitalism, which dominated the second half of the 19th century & fostered huge concentrations of wealth & power, was backed by a judiciary which time and again ruled against those who challenged it.
Yet the costs of this indifference to the victims of capital were high. For millions, living and working conditions were poor, and there was no hope of escaping from a lifetime of poverty.
As late as the year 1900, the United States had the highest job-related fatality rate of any industrialized nation in the world. Most industrial workers still worked a 10-hour day (12 hours in the steel industry)...
photo: Giles Edmund Newsom – Bessemer City, North Carolina
photo: Giles Edmund Newsom – Bessemer City, North Carolina
yet earned from 20 to 40 percent less than the minimum deemed necessary for a decent life. The situation was only worse for children, whose numbers in the workforce doubled between 1870 and 1900.
When slavery was abolished at the end of the Civil War in 1865 southern states created black codes, laws which aimed to keep white supremacy in place.
Migrant workers in every corner of the U.S. have exposed the same kind of exploitation that the McDonald’s student guest workers faced—along with the same threats of immigration-based retaliation.thehill.com/blogs/congress…
Everywhere we go, we inject our capitalist based labor abuses with us. After 12 years of war, labor abuses rampant on US bases in Afghanistan america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/…
Slave labor was so profitable, it sprouted more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi River valley than anywhere in the nation. No matter how wide the gap between rich and poor, class tensions among whites were eased by the belief they all belonged to the “superior race.”
Slave labor built today's billionaire class, particularly in the South. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Sectoral Bargaining is the solution!
theweek.com/articles/86021…
theweek.com/articles/86021…
Labor Has Only One Candidate: Bernie Sanders jacobinmag.com/2019/09/bernie…
The Sanders campaign tackles one critical labor issue that Warren leaves untouched: at-will employment. vice.com/en_us/article/…
