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Precarity and deunionization have grown up (or down) together. Yet the focus of union renewal scholars on the forms and constituencies of organizing has neglected a holistic appraisal of their connection and the role of work itself. This article uses a focused examination of frontline retail to understand the links between deteriorating job quality, new modes of control and their effects on worker consciousness. Based on qualitative interviews with 75 workers at Macy's and Target stores, I identify a paradigm of contingent control embodied in precarious employment, routinized tasks, "soft" management and a largely "secondary" workforce. This regime diminishes job identity and opposition but heightens workers' solidarity, pointing toward a model of community-based industrial unionism that could serve as an organizational vehicle to reverse the growth of precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Thirteenth Amendment is undergoing a renaissance in scholarship and advocacy. Labor scholars and advocates are looking at the Thirteenth Amendment as a new source of constitutional rights for several reasons. First, its prohibition against involuntary servitude applies both to the public and private spheres. Second, its capacious text and history allows for new interpretive approaches. Third, the idea of a constitutional floor for free labor is an appealing one in an era of retrenchment in legislatures and the courts. The Trump Administration and the Republican Congress can significantly change the direction of labor policy in the coming years. Now, the prospects are dim for an increase in the minimum wage at the federal level. The moral underpinnings of increasing the minimum wage are even greater now as economic inequality continues to increase. But the control of all three branches of government means that the foundations of the New Deal--in place for over eighty years--must be reexamined and reasserted. Thus, new grounds must be developed to bolster the original commitments to the New Deal. In this Article, I argue that the Thirteenth Amendment coupled with the Fourteenth Amendment provides a basis for the equal application of minimum wage laws to all workers. Then, I apply the Amendment as safeguard against the erosion of minimum labor standards in three current controversies--the subminimum wage, the tipped minimum wage, and workers in immigration detention. There are historical precedents for the Thirteenth Amendment being used as a basis to regulate working conditions. The Freedmen's Bureau Act of 1865 provides an example of when the federal government intervened in the regulation of labor standards. The Act also provides a basis for an aggressive campaign of the federal government to regulate the labor standards of workers. History can show a way for an expanded role of the government in the setting and enforcing of labor standards. Yet, the Commerce Clause has always been an unsteady and historically contingent grounding for Congress's power to regulate the economy. In this Article, then, I argue that the Thirteenth Amendment provides alternative constitu-tional support for the federal minimum wage. This Article will also shine a light on workers who are not covered by any minimum wage because their states do not have a minimum wage and they are not covered by FLSA jurisdiction. Next, the Article will show how the movement for higher wages in the fast food industry has adopted the public-private flexibility of the Thirteenth Amendment as against the government and employers. The Article then concludes by exploring legal strategies--under the Thirteenth Amendment--to expand minimum wage laws to workers who are not covered by the laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on in-depth interviews largely with women working as community health workers (CHWs) and documents, the article shines the spotlight on CHWs, who remain a blind spot in the literature on South African labour studies. Abandoned by mainstream unions and often ignored by labour scholars, the article reveals that CHW workers are crafting their own nascent organisational responses as women and as precarious workers to their conditions. New organisational responses led by women who carry most of the social and economic burden are beginning to contest their conditions of precariousness by using tools such as strikes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a comparison of central debates in South African labor sociology in the 1970s and the contemporary era. I argue that scholars can break through impasses in current labor sociology debates by reviving attention to the land-labor-livelihood (LLL) connections that inspired theoretical advancements in the South African literature of the 1970s. After an introduction and definition of LLL connections, the paper analyzes an exemplary work of the labor literature of the 1970s, giving special attention to the way in which the LLL focus shaped the questions asked by the authors. The article proceeds to a review of central debates from the current labor literature, which focuses primarily on issues of the labor movement. It is argued that this focus on movements has limited the scope of labor scholarship, resulting in an impasse in South African labor debates. An emerging literature that renews attention to the LLL connections is proposed as a model for moving beyond this impasse. I close the article by discussing the implications for this review of South African literature for global labor scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the informal workers' movement in Argentina, the formal-informal solidarity in Southern Africa, and the shift in labor scholarship away from a central orientation and toward democratization, state policy, and law.

The author discusses the changes in the role of the labor movements and labor scholars around the world. He mentions that labor movements used to stand at the center of movements for democratization and social change. He talks about the need for labor scholars to consider how political context influences labor laws. He also suggests that strengthening the weak labor law protecting individuals is one area in which labor scholars should make a real contribution.

The article focuses on the People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference (POCLSC) second national meeting at The George Washington University Law School held on October 7-10, 2004 in Washington, D.C. The conference addresses national and international issues affecting people of color and other subordinated persons.

The article offers information on the experiment in cooperative living and workers' education carried out by Commonwealth College, resident labor school in the Southern Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. The students and teachers jointly built about 22 cottages there. Democracy and simplicity are writ large at the campus. Teachers there receive no pay. Carnegie Corp. of New York donated $5,000 for a library there. The American Fund for Public Service also aided the school.