The Roots of Prosperity Visions of a New Labor Movement

By Christopher B. Daly 0 Comments Apr 1, 1999

American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor By Jacqueline Jones W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1998, 543 pages. For most of the past two decades, America has been having one of its periodic love affairs with Wall Street. Like the early 1890s or the late 1920s, this is a time when plenty(...)

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Remembering Wessagussett

By Dave Denison 0 Comments Apr 1, 1999

WEYMOUTH — The land isn’t much to look at, as even Jodi Purdy-Quinlan, the most ardent champion of these overgrown woodsy acres, will admit. “All this brush would have to come out,” she says with a sweep of her hand, as we slowly drive down Sea Street in her metallic-green Ford pickup truck. Surrounded by(...)

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Fried

By Ralph Lombreglia 0 Comments Apr 1, 1999

Michael opened his front door and stepped into the pre-dawn light, not to check the weather or get the papers but merely to express his stupefaction at standing upright at this hour of the day. It was 4:30 a.m. He’d had four hours of bad sleep featuring a dream of global Network collapse, but that(...)

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Labor Unions and Labor Law

By CommonWealth Staff 0 Comments Apr 1, 1999

Massachusetts is more heavily unionized than the national average, with 15.9 percent of those employed belonging to a union. Yet despite the state’s pro-labor reputation, it ranks behind 17 other states–including New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut–in union membership. In every state, there are more employees represented by unions – 17.4 percent in Massachusetts–than there(...)

Economy

Economist Juliet B Schor on the Maxedout Middle Class

By Dave Denison 0 Comments Apr 1, 1999

With the publication of The Overworked American in 1992, Harvard economist Juliet B. Schor became part of the tiny company of left-wing economists who have found a wide national audience. Her stated aim was to “help revive the public discussion on hours of work which died out 50 years ago.” She succeeded. The argument that(...)

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Doing More Than the Minimum

By Paul E. Harrington and Andrew Sum 0 Comments Apr 1, 1999

This year, Democrats and Republicans in the Massachusetts Legislature and in the governor’s office have united around a plan to increase the state minimum wage above the current level of $5.25 an hour. State leaders are considering whether businesses in Massachusetts will have to pay a minimum of $6.15 an hour (the governor’s proposal), or(...)

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The Numbers Game

By Phil Primack 0 Comments Apr 1, 1999

For years the Massachusetts AFL-CIO has boasted 400,000 union members in its ranks. Today there are 404,000, to be exact, according to AFL-CIO officials. But thousands of those workers–including the 55,000 police officers and other public employees who belong to the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE)–claim not to belong to the state AFL-CIO. Confused?(...)

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Illegal Strikes

By Carol Gerwin 0 Comments Apr 1, 1999

Nothing defuses labor militancy like a few years of prosperity. The state’s coffers flush with tax revenue, public employee unions are winning raises they didn’t see in the recession of the early ’90s. So it’s been a while since Massachusetts has seen one of those peculiarities of organized labor: the illegal strike. But for much(...)

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Expanding Family Leave

By Carol Gerwin 0 Comments Apr 1, 1999

When Kathleen Casavant was growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, her mother stayed home to raise her and her three brothers. There was never any worry about getting time off from work. No matter what came up – an illness, a doctor’s appointment, another baby–her mother was free to take care of it. Most(...)

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A Rising Tide of Unionism

By Carol Gerwin 0 Comments Apr 1, 1999

Union forces have been gaining strength in Massachusetts, if their membership rolls are any guide. An estimated 30,000 workers joined unions in 1998, bringing the state’s total organized labor force to about 453,000 people, according to federal statistics. And there is other good news for local labor leaders: Organized labor’s share of the total work(...)

Spring 1999