Thanksgiving Day sales, Black Friday, Cyber Monday prevent retail workers from enjoying family time. Employers aren’t just giving workers unstable, unpredictable shifts during the hectic holiday season — they’re doing it all year round. Nearly 40 percent of retail workers are given irregular schedules that wreak havoc on their lives.
After a decade long campaign led by Unite union, fast food chains have committed to ending zero hour contracts in New Zealand. Tens of thousands of workers in the fast food industry will now have secure hours of employment. This victory in New Zealand -- supported by workers in Indonesia, Korea, Philippines, Hong Kong and elsewhere represents a fundamental shift in the employment relationship of the most vulnerable workers in the country
Fast-food and retail workers demonstrating in record numbers, cities across the country raising their minimum wage under public pressure, student athletes gaining recognition as employees of their universities, the labor movement has seen some important—and, at times, unexpected—victories this past year.
Campaigns for social control of capital look different from social democratic movements that began in the 1870s and endured through the mid-1960s. Thus many underestimate the significance of the Occupy Movement, the mobilization of domestic workers, immigrants, restaurant and fast food workers, home healthcare workers, self-employed women workers, tomato pickers or the landless. Nonetheless, we should recognize that these campaigns all challenge capital.
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