Free and Unfree Labor: Working-class people's choices, and lack of choices, have always been shaped by outside forces. Ideas about race and gender affect these choices, as do systems of slavery, immigration, capitalism, and government policy toward Native Americans, for example. Individuals and communities have found ways to practice everyday resistance and push back on these systems.
Contractual work
Guest work
Law
Deportation
Debt
Reform
Wage gap
Industrial
Agriculture
Child labor Reconstruction Emancipation Works progress administration
Native American boarding school
Reservations
Changing Work
Changing Work: Individuals, groups, and social movements have sought to change labor conditions through advocacy, protest, and other methods. Members of labor unions went on strike for higher wages or better working conditions, while social reformers advocated for government regulations of workplaces.
8 hrs workday
Knights of Labor
Labor Relations Act 1935
Discrimination
Minimum working age
Four day workweek
Minimum Wage
Overtime
Breaks
Solidarity among workers
1934 Mill Strike
Atlanta Washerwoman Strike 1881
Triangle Factory Fire
Radium Girls
Progressive Era
Womens Movement
Civil Rights movement
Mary Van Kleeck
Department of Labor
Kinds of Work
Kinds of Work: Each kind of workplace has a history, including restaurants, beauty parlors, and offices, to name a few. Other aspects of society have also intersected with labor to make kinds of work distinct: sexuality, empire, immigration, and civil rights movements.
Farm work
Military
Blue collar
White collar
Self-employed; entrepreneur…
Domestic Work
Reproductive Labor - cooking, cleaning, children, homemaking
Manufacturing/Factory Work
Civil Rights Movement
Women’s Movement
Penal Labor/Prisons
