Workers in America’s newsrooms and museums are fighting back against low wages, job insecurity and the idea that devotion to their work should be compensation enough.
On this special Labor Day edition of the Labor Heritage Power Hour, NewsGuild-CWA President Jon Schleuss takes us inside the organizing wave sweeping small local newsrooms. As corporate consolidation, layoffs and shrinking wages hollow out local journalism, reporters are building unions to defend their livelihoods—and the vital public-service journalism their communities depend on.
Then Maida Rosenstein of UAW Local 2010 discusses the surge of organizing at museums and cultural institutions. Museum workers may love their jobs and believe deeply in their institutions, but love doesn’t pay the rent. They’re organizing for living wages, affordable health care, safer workplaces, job security and a meaningful voice on the job.
First, historian Donna Haverty-Stacke joins America's Workforce Radio host Ed “Flash” Ferenc to uncover Labor Day’s own history of worker resistance—and explain how it became America’s “respectable” labor holiday while May Day retained its more radical identity.
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