Barbara Ehrenreich was an American author and political activist. During the 1980s and early 1990s, she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. She was a widely read and award-winning columnist and essayist and the author of 21 books. Ehrenreich was best known for her 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, a memoir of her three-month experiment surviving on a series of minimum-wage jobs. She was a recipient of a Lannan Literary Award and the Erasmus Prize.
John Henry O'Hara was one of America's most prolific writers of short stories, credited with helping to invent The New Yorker magazine short story style. He became a best-selling novelist before the age of 30 with Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. While O'Hara's legacy as a writer is debated, his work was praised by such contemporaries as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and his champions rank him highly among the major under-appreciated American writers of the 20th century. Few college students educated after O'Hara's death in 1970 have discovered him, chiefly because he refused to allow his work to be reprinted in anthologies used to teach literature at the college level.
John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) from 1920 to 1960. A major player in the history of coal mining, he was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. After resigning as head of the CIO in 1941, thus keeping his promise of resignation if President Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the 1940 election against Wendell Willkie, Lewis took the United Mine Workers out of the CIO in 1942 and in 1944 took the union into the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, also known as simply the March on Washington or the Great March on Washington, was held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. At the march, final speaker Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech in which he called for an end to racism and racial segregation.
Robert Bernard Reich is an American professor, author, lawyer, and political commentator. He worked in the administrations of presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and served as Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997 in the cabinet of President Bill Clinton. He was also a member of President Barack Obama's economic transition advisory board.
Julian Lincoln Simon was an American economist. He was a professor of economics and business administration at the University of Illinois from 1963 to 1983 before later moving to the University of Maryland, where he taught for the remainder of his academic career.
Temporary work or temporary employment refers to an employment situation where the working arrangement is limited to a certain period of time based on the needs of the employing organization. Temporary employees are sometimes called "contractual", "seasonal", "interim", "casual staff", "outsourcing", "freelance"; or the words may be shortened to "temps". In some instances, temporary, highly skilled professionals refer to themselves as consultants. Increasingly, executive-level positions are also filled with interim executives or fractional executives.
Freelance, freelancer, or freelance worker, are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance workers are sometimes represented by a company or a temporary agency that resells freelance labor to clients; others work independently or use professional associations or websites to get work.
Leo M. Cherne (1912–1999) was an American economist, public servant, and four-decade head of the International Rescue Committee.
Juliet B. Schor is an American economist and Sociology Professor at Boston College. She has studied trends in working time, consumerism, the relationship between work and family, women's issues and economic inequality, and concerns about climate change in the environment. From 2010 to 2017, she studied the sharing economy under a large research project funded by the MacArthur Foundation. She is currently working on a project titled "The Algorithmic Workplace" with a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Hendrik Hertzberg is an American journalist, best known as the principal political commentator for The New Yorker magazine. He has also been a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter and editor of The New Republic, and is the author of ¡Obámanos! The Rise of a New Political Era and Politics: Observations & Arguments. In 2009, Forbes named Hertzberg one of the "25 Most Influential Liberals in the U.S. Media," placing him at number seventeen.
Kevin Brian Bales is Professor of Contemporary Slavery at the University of Nottingham, co-author of the Global Slavery Index, and was a co-founder and previously president of Free the Slaves, the US sister organization of Anti-Slavery International.
Criticism of capitalism is a critique of political economy that involves the rejection of, or dissatisfaction with the economic system of capitalism and its outcomes. Criticisms typically range from expressing disagreement with particular aspects or outcomes of capitalism to rejecting the principles of the capitalist system in its entirety.
Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do is a 1974 nonfiction book by the oral historian and radio broadcaster Studs Terkel.
The John Pickle Company, Inc. (JPC) is a Tulsa, Oklahoma based oil industry parts manufacturer. The Tulsa factory closed in September 2002. The company currently has operations in Kuwait, John Pickle Middle East, the pressure-vessel division of Kuwait Pipe Industries and Oil Services Company (KPS).
Word Magazine was an online magazine active from 1995 to 2000.
Human trafficking in Florida is the illegal trade of human beings for sexual exploitation or forced labor as it occurs in the state of Florida. After California and New York, Florida has the most human trafficking cases in the United States. Florida has had cases of sex trafficking, domestic servitude, and forced labor.
Gig workers are independent contractors, online platform workers, contract firm workers, on-call workers, and temporary workers. Gig workers enter into formal agreements with on-demand companies to provide services to the company's clients.
Work or labour is the intentional activity people perform to support the needs and wants of themselves, others, or a wider community. In the context of economics, work can be viewed as the human activity that contributes towards the goods and services within an economy.
A bullshit job or pseudowork is meaningless or unnecessary wage labour which the worker is obliged to pretend to have a purpose. Polling in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands indicates that around 40% of workers consider their job to fit this description.
