MAY DAY 2012: REMEMBERING WHY Robert J.S. Ross, rjsross@clarku.edu The story of May Day begins with the struggle to make the eight-hour workday the legal and economic norm for wageworkers. In the older industrial countries, this struggle was largely successful,…
Bread and Roses: Dignity and Respect in Working Class Struggles
Wednesday, September 7, 2011 From This week in Sociology Bread and Roses: Dignity and Respect in Working Class Struggles by Robert J. S. Ross, Clark University, Professor of Sociology On January 11, 1912 a group of Polish women textile workers…
Struggles at the bottom of the pyramid [unpublished] June 2009
In the midst of the last Great Depression, in 1933, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins said: “The red silk bargain dress in the shop window is a danger signal. It is a warning of the return of the sweatshop, a…
Workers’ Wages in China and Bangladesh
Author’s note: this letter made the NYT website, but not the grown-up newspaper. link » July 23, 2010 Workers’ Wages in China and Bangladesh To the Editor: Re “As Labor Costs Rise in China, Textile Jobs Shift Elsewhere” (front page,…
Bangladesh and the Triangle Fires: Exporting fires from rich to poor
12/15/10 Bangladesh and the Triangle Fires: Exporting fires from rich to poor 100 years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a sordid parallel exists across the globe Laws and enforcement needed in trade agreements On March 25 we will observe the…
In Chains at the Bottom of the Pyramid : Gender and Sweated Labor in Global Apparel Production
Published on the blog site This week in Sociology OCTOBER 25, 2011 Robert J.S. Ross – Clark University Sweatshop conditions refer to long hours, low wages and oppressive conditions – dangerous unhealthy, psychologically abusive or squalid. In the global assembly…