At Slate, Gabriel Thompson describes what it’s like to be a food-service worker at Levi’s Stadium at Super Bowl 50 — and explores the low-wage, part-time workforce of Silicon Valley.
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Posted inEditor's Pick, Nonfiction, Quotes
I Was a Super Bowl Concession Worker
At Slate, Gabriel Thompson describes what it’s like to be a food-service worker at Levi’s Stadium at Super Bowl 50 — and explores the low-wage, part-time workforce of Silicon Valley.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Happens When We Run Out of Jobs?
After 300 years of breathtaking innovation, people aren’t massively unemployed or indentured by machines. But to suggest how this could change, some economists have pointed to the defunct career of the second-most-important species in U.S. economic history: the horse. For many centuries, people created technologies that made the horse more productive and more valuable—like plows […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Makes a Job a Calling?
In a 2009 paper for Administrative Science Quarterly, J. Stuart Bunderson and Jeffery A. Thompson studied zookeepers and found that the profession was about the closest anyone in the modern, secular world comes to having a calling—the sort of intensely meaningful career that Martin Luther said could turn work into a divine offering. Zookeeping is dirty, repetitive, and […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The New York Times Investigates the Exploitation of Nail Salon Workers
Salon workers describe a culture of subservience that extends far beyond the pampering of customers. Tips or wages are often skimmed or never delivered, or deducted as punishment for things like spilled bottles of polish. At her Harlem salon, Ms. Cacho said she and her colleagues had to buy new clothes in whatever color the […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Fair Hours Have Once Again Become a Basic Concern In Worker Organizing
Along with wages and conditions, hours used to be a basic concern in worker organizing. During the heyday of the struggle over hours, in the century before World War II, the demand was always for fewer of them. The “Lowell Mill Girls” agitated for a 10-hour day, and the Haymarket strikers wanted to get down […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
‘I Would Prefer Not To’: The Origins of the White Collar Worker
Before the Civil War, the clerk was “a small but unusual phenomenon.” By the end of the 19th century, clerical workers were a social force to be reckoned with. This is the story of their rise.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
‘I Would Prefer Not To’: The Origins of the White Collar Worker
Before the Civil War, the clerk was “a small but unusual phenomenon.” By the end of the 19th century, clerical workers were a social force to be reckoned with. This is the story of their rise.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Inequality of Maternity Leave in the United States
In Bloomberg Businessweek, Claire Suddath reports that there are only two countries in the world that don’t have some type of legally protected, partially paid leave for working women who just had a baby: Papua New Guinea and the U.S. The result is another big gap between the haves and have-nots: The policies vary widely […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Painful Business of Running a Franchise
It’s not just the workers who get a lousy deal. Over the years, Bob Baber, the Quiznos franchisee, became increasingly frustrated by the terms of his contract. One of the issues that galled him the most was that Quiznos was allowed to (and did) place additional sub shops in his franchise area, creating what he […]