Fresh audio product: British rot and the fight for abortion rights 50 years ago
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): January 26, 2023 Josh White, author of Goodbye United Kingdom, on that country’s trajectory of decline • Felicia Kornbluh, author of A Woman’s Life Is a Human Life, talks about the fight for abortion rights in the late 60s and early 70s, and how it must be part of a larger struggle for reproductive justice
More on union density
A couple of follow-up points to Thursday’s post on falling union density. manufacturing leads the way down Headline figures on private sector union density (the share of the employed belonging to unions) obscure an important fact: the downtrend is largely a story of the decline in manufacturing. Over four-fifths—88% to be precise—of the fall in the number of unionized workers since 1983 is accounted for by the loss of union jobs in manufacturing. Since 2000, it’s 84%. The history is graphed below. The raw numbers are stunning. From 1983 to 2022, private… Read More
Fresh audio product: Afghanistan and port ecology
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): January 19, 2023 Matthieu Aikins, author of this article (among many), on the situation in Afghanistan with the US gone and the Taliban in control • Christina Dunbar-Hester, author of Oil Beach, on the ecology of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach
Union density keeps falling
As it has for thirty-seven of the last fifty years, the share of the workforce belonging to a union, aka union density, fell in 2022. It’s risen in only four years in that span; it was unchanged in nine. The grim history, reported this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is graphed below. In 2022, 10.1% of the employed belonged to a union, down from 10.3% the previous year. The decline was led by the public sector, where density fell from 33.9% to 33.1%, a decline of 0.8; the private sector… Read More
Fresh audio product: the right speaks
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): January 12, 2023 Emily Jashinsky of The Federalist on the GOP: the meaning of the speaker fight, and what is the base of the Freedom Caucus anyway? • Sohrab Ahmari, co-founder of Compact Magazine, offers a left–right hybrid
LBO News from Doug Henwood 