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One Day Longer

Shaun Richman Jacobin
Forty thousand Verizon workers have now been on strike for a month. These days, a strike of the Verizon action’s scale and duration is exceedingly rare. That’s largely because the stakes for workers are so high. Strikers don’t just lose their pay and benefits — they risk losing their job entirely.

New Rule Expands Overtime Pay to Millions of Workers

Jeanne Sahadi CNN
The change -- which has been criticized as too drastic by many employers -- will go into effect on Dec. 1, 2016. It is intended to expand access to overtime pay for otherwise low-salaried workers who log long hours but have been treated as exempt from overtime because they perform some managerial duties.

It's Only Words

Narendar Pani The Hindu
In Banking on Words, Arjun Appadurai argues that the 2008 financial crisis was, in essence, a failure of language. Narendar Pani finds that argument somewhat overstated, while at the same time acknowledging this book's "path-breaking" analysis of the role language has come to play in the way markets behave and are managed.

Film: Three Tribeca Narratives

Bill Meyer Hollywood Progressive
When arriving at a film festival like Tribeca, it’s pretty much a crap shoot when you scour the large catalog and read the brief descriptions of the films. Among the many choices, there were at least three narratives that passed the test and went on to win awards from the jury and the audience.

McDonald's Just Admitted That Worker Benefits Are Actually Good for Business

Alex Mierjeski ATTN:
Higher pay scales for longer-term employees would likely further reduce turnover and increase loyalty, says Erin Johansson, research director at Jobs With Justice. It would also reduce the burden on tax-paying Americans, who shell out more than $1.2 billion each year to cover public assistance programs for McDonald's employees, according to a recent study by the National Employment Law Project.

Spring Training for the Next Wave of Food Activists

Brian Massey Civil Eats
The food activist group, Eco Practicum, came together for five days in New York City for the third annual program produced in partnership with Our Name Is Farm, a training aimed at building “effective advocacy for a better food system.”

Americans Don't Miss Manufacturing - They Miss Unions

Ben Casselman FiveThirtyEight
On average, manufacturing jobs still pay better than most jobs available to people without a college degree. But there isn't anything special about manufacturing that made it a source of good living wage jobs for so many decades. The real reason why some terrible manufacturing jobs became good jobs is simple: unions. We may not bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. in large numbers, but we can work to revitalize and rebuild unions.

The Good Wife: Florrick v. the Sisterhood

MEGAN GARBER The Atlantic
The CBS drama’s dramatic finale brought a sad but fitting end to a show that has always been a little bit awkward about its female friendships.

Burying the White Working Class

Connor Kilpatrick Jacobin
Liberal condescension towards white workers is code for a broader anti-working class agenda.

The Gender Gap in a Post-Automation World

Heidi Liu On Labor
Drawing from research in labor and economic history, this post evaluates the validity of each of these claims; overall, while it’s likely that automation will benefit socially aware individuals, it’s less likely to reduce the gender gap in employment.