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Tag: labor

Columns

I, Start-up
December 04, 2014
Listen and you’ll hear it humming along quietly in the background of your life. It’s the sound of other people’s labor. Alfred, yet another start-up in the on-demand service economy, promises to make it easy and affordable for you to finally tune that sound out. Offering ...

The Jobs vs. the Environment Myth Lives On
October 16, 2014
Earlier this month, MSNBC host Chris Hayes participated in a bit of sparring with Cecil Roberts of the United Mine Workers of America. Placing himself firmly in the “anything but country music” camp of post-Carter American liberalism, Hayes brashly proclaimed, “in fifty ...

“Payment on an Unpaid Basis”
October 01, 2014
“Payment is on an unpaid basis,” is a sentence that should not exist. It’s a linguistic offense, but also a legal one: zero dollars an hour is well below the minimum wage in all fifty states. Unless the employee is a child working fourteen hours a day on a farm, an ...

“So, What Do You Do?”
September 19, 2014
[A version of this article appeared in the German newspaper Die ZEIT in July, where it inspired considerable debate and commentary. The article has been translated by the author and is reprinted here with permission; he has also written a response to the commentary, below. – ...

Our Deadly Culture of Overwork
June 13, 2014
By now, you’ve probably heard about the automobile accident in New Jersey last weekend that nearly killed comedian Tracy Morgan, and did kill Morgan’s colleague, James McNair. Morgan remains in critical condition and is expected to remain hospitalized for weeks, and three ...

Scab Cinema and Pseudo-Reality TV
May 29, 2014
When critics talk about movies or TV shows, they mostly treat them as self-contained texts to be described, interpreted, and “read.” This way of thinking similarly dominates the way most of the audience thinks about the work. If anyone talks about the production side, it is ...

Child Care, Elder Care, and the Last Feminist Frontier
May 12, 2014
Last month, Jamie Nesbitt Golden published a post on her website entitled “Eldercare: The Forgotten Feminist Issue.” It is, in part, a moving personal essay about the struggles of caring for ill, aging parent whose cognitive facilities are slipping away. But it’s also, as ...

Labor Politics and the Liberal Arts Nanny
April 14, 2014
A liberal arts nanny doesn’t take care of children for life. For her, it’s just a stopping point between college and career: a well-paying, totally socially acceptable activity while she waits for the rest of her life to happen. And the family that hires a liberal arts nanny ...

Beyoncé, Kim, and the Politics of Celebrity Labor
March 31, 2014
How do you make a celebrity? It’s popular to think of celebrities as highly disposable—as cheap and as flimsy as a poly-blend tank from Forever 21, with similarly dubious ethics of production. But the labor involved in the production of celebrity is not only complex, but ...

Sit-Ups for Start-Ups
March 24, 2014
In the co-working area of Brooklyn Boulders Somerville, a rock-climbing gym outside of Boston that has more in common with a start-up office than a Crunch, is a sign emblazoned with a manifesto: “Physicality stimulates innovation and creativity.” A café-like space with ...