We are all fast-food workers now

The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages

Audiobook

English language

Published Feb. 27, 2018 by Beacon Press.

"The story of low-wage workers rising up around the world to demand respect and a living wage. We Are All Fast Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages traces the evolution of a new global labor movement sparked and sustained by low-wage workers from Manila to Manhattan, from Baja California to Bangladesh, from Capetown to Cambodia. This is an up close and personal look at globalization and its costs, as seen through the eyes and told whenever possible through the words of low-wage workers themselves: the berry pickers and small farmers, fast food servers, retail cashiers, garment workers, hotel housekeepers, home health care aides, airport workers and adjunct professors who are fighting for respect, safety and a living wage. The result of 140 interviews by award-winning historian Annelise Orleck, and with original photographs by Liz Cooke, this is a powerful look at neo-liberalism and its damages, a story …

3 editions

Initially Scattered but Finishes Strong

This book is best viewed as a loosely organized collection of anecdotes and interviews across the global labor rights movement. The first half of the book has almost no organization, essentially rapid-firing different stories with absolutely no macro perspective, while the second half does a good job reviewing developments in low wage workers rights movements in different geographies. Orleck also contradicts her arguments throughout the book (e.g. arguing against price supports for food in one chapter and for them in another), weirdly criticizes Deng Xiaoping as a neoliberal (wut), and overall seems too committed to politics over truth here. I'm not saying politics isn't important, or that it's inappropriate to have a political goal for a book (and she explicitly says she does here), but that you shouldn't jettison truth for those goals. This shows through most clearly in sections on GMOs and on lower income gains globally (which are …

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Subjects

  • Living wage movement
  • Interviews
  • Working poor
  • Poor
  • Minimum wage
  • HISTORY / Modern / 21st Century
  • POLITICAL SCIENCE / Labor & Industrial Relations
  • SOCIAL SCIENCE / Social Classes

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