Last Friday, on May Day, thousands of essential workers at large corporations like Amazon, Target, and Instacart went on a one-day strike to protest their unsafe working conditions, low wages, and lack of healthcare benefits and paid sick leave. On today’s episode, we learn more about the strikes and put them in the context of recent labor history with Clare Hammonds and José La Luz, scholars and activists whose work is featured in the new collection Labor in the Time of Trump.
Clare Hammonds is a professor in the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is one of the editors of Labor in the Time of Trump (Cornell University Press, 2019).
José La Luz is a labor activist and political intellectual who advocates for worker rights in the United States and Puerto Rico. He is the co-author, with Bill Fletcher Jr., of “Trump, Right-Wing Populism, and the Future of Organized Labor” in Labor in the Time of Trump.
Cover image: “Warehouse Workers for Justice: Earth Day to May Day (Day 6)” by Aaron Hughes