Will the Bangladesh factory disaster help U.S. labor organize?
Will the Bangladesh factory disaster help U.S. labor organize?
- May 30, 2013
- David Meyer, sociology professor, is featured on the American Public Media Marketplace May 30, 2013
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From American Public Marketplace:
Still, the global worker oppression argument — linking low-wage Walmart warehouse
workers in Southern California or shelf-stockers in Maryland to grossly-underpaid
garment workers in Bangladesh — can seem like a rhetorical stretch. “Is there some
stretching that goes on? There’s always some stretching that goes on,” responds David
Meyer. He’s a sociologist and political scientist at University of California, Irvine,
and author of the book ‘The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America.’ Meyer
says labor has always used workplace tragedies and outrages — like the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory fire (1911) in New York — to organize. Nowadays, it’s not so much about starvation
wages or deadly factory conditions. It’s more often about living wages, the right
to organize, legislative attacks on collective bargaining. “In the United States,
labor is fighting an uphill battle -- right-to-work laws are coming in in places where
they’ve never been before,” says Meyer. “Activism about the garment industry — even
if the garment industry is abroad — is meant to connect to activism for public sector
workers, like teachers and firefighters.”
Audio link available at http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/will-bangladesh-factory...
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