"We are all fast-food workers now" : the global uprising against poverty wages

Orleck, Annelise. (Author). Cooke, Liz, (photographer.).

Summary: "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 of resistance and rebellion, a reflection on hope and change as it rises from the bottom up"--

Record details

ISBN: 9780807081778
ISBN: 0807081779
Physical Description: print
xiii, 298 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Publisher: Boston : Beacon Press, [2018]

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 262-280) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Part I. Poverty wages, we're not lovin' it: roots and branches of a global uprising -- Brands of wage slavery, marks of labor solidarity -- Inequality rising -- All we're asking for is a little respect -- "We are workers, not slaves" -- "I consider the union my second mother" -- Hotel housekeepers go Norma Rae -- United for respect: OUR Walmart and the uprising of retail workers -- Supersize my wages: fast-food workers and the march of history -- 1911-2011: history and the global labor struggle -- People Power movements in the twenty-first century -- "You can't dismantle capitalism without dismantling patriarchy" -- This is what solidarity feels like -- Part II. The rising of the global precariat -- Respect, let it go, 'cause baby, you're a firework -- Realizing precarity: "We are all fast-food workers now" -- Days of disruption, 2016 -- The new civil rights movement -- Counting victories, girding for an uphill struggle -- Huelga de Hambre: hunger and hunger strikes rising -- Social movement unionism and the souls of workers -- "Contractualization" -- "Stand up, live better": organizing for respect at Walmart -- Part III. Garment workers' organizing in the age of fast fashion -- "If people would think about us, we wouldn't die": beautiful clothes, ugly reality -- How the rag trade went global -- "The girl effect" -- "Made with love in Bangladesh" -- "We are not a pocket revolution": Bangladeshi garment workers since Rana Plaza -- "A Khmer would rather work for free than work without dignity" -- "After Pol Pot, we need a good life" -- Consciousness-raising, Cambodia style -- Filipina garment workers, organizing in the zone -- Part IV. No rice without freedom, no freedom without rice: the global uprising of peasants and farmworkers -- "No land no life": uprisings of the "landless" -- "Agrarian reform in reverse": food crises, land grabs, and migrant labor -- Milk with dignity -- "Like the time of Cesar Chavez": strawberry fields, exploitation forever -- Bitter grapes -- "What are we rising for?" -- "These borders are not our borders" -- After the colonizers, RICE -- Part V. "They said it was impossible": local victories and transformative visions -- "We can turn around the labor movement. We can rebuild power and we can win!" -- Flashes of hope -- Big ideas, new models, small courtesies build a new world.