Manual knitting machine.

The Vermont Knitters

A major labor law dispute simmered for decades. At its center? Women being paid to do piecework on knitting machines in their homes.
An elections poster of the General Jewish Labour Bund hung in Kiev, 1917. Heading: "Where we live, there is our country!"

How the Jewish Labor Bund Changed After World War II

For those thousands involved with the Bund, the group played an important role in a era marked by trauma, displacement, and resettlement.
Group of strawberry pickers in a strawberry field in Bell, California, ca.1910

Internationalism and Racism in the Labor Movement

A commitment to internationalism helped build multi-ethnic campaigns within the more radical and anti-authoritarian side of the US labor movement.
A butcher processes some meat at Vincents Meat Market on April 17, 2020, in Bronx, New York City

Zombies of the Slaughterhouse

The oppressions of Homo sapiens and other species in the US livestock industry aren’t distinct from one another—they’re mutually constitutive.
The gravestone of Ginger Goodwin

Was There a Conspiracy to Kill a Canadian Labor Activist?

While conspiracy theories about Ginger Goodwin’s death may interest some, these complicated explanations deflect our attention from real issues.
Women sewing fabric for seats at Pullman Works, Chicago, Illinois.

Pullman Women at Work: From Gilded Age to Atomic Age

Pullman resisted hiring women and did his best to keep attention away from the company’s female employees.
Animal magnetism

Mesmerizing Labor

The man who introduced mesmerism to the US was a slave-owner from Guadeloupe, where planters were experimenting with “magnetizing” their enslaved people.
Striking miners in Buchtel, Ohio receiving "Blackleg" workmen when returning from their work escorted by a detachment of Pinkerton's detectives

American Vigilantism

In the early 20th century, labor unrest and strike breaking were done not by the government, by private agencies and self-appointed vigilantes.
This statue in front of US Steel's Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock, PA depicts Joe Magarac, a mythical steelworker deriving from local legend.

Joe Magarac, a Boss’s Idea of a Folk Hero?

The Paul Bunyan of the steel industry never went on strike. He was too tied up working the twenty-four-hour shifts that unions were fighting.
Blind men working on boxes for Elizabeth Arden cosmetics at the Lighthouse, an institution for the blind in New York

How Blind Activists Fought for Blind Workers

The National Federation of the Blind was the first major group of its kind to be led by visually impaired people.