Back in 2009, the United States ushered in the new decade with a federal minimum wage of $7.25. Ten years later in 2020, it hasn’t risen at all—even as the costs of housing, education, and healthcare have skyrocketed.
To explore the issue of stagnant and poverty wages, guest host Nan Enstad is joined by historian Annelise Orleck, author of We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now, to talk about the Fight for $15 in the U.S. and the broader global struggle for a living wage.
Annelise Orleck is a professor of history at Dartmouth College. She is the author of several books, including Common Sense And A Little Fire: Women and Working Class Politics in the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 1995), Storming Caesar’s Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty (Beacon Press, 2005), and most recently “We are All Fast-food Workers Now”: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages (Beacon Press, 2017).
