US workers were much more affected by the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic than workers in Europe due to weak social protection. The post-World War II phase of social security, characterised by the competitive superiority of US industry, is long gone. For decades, the situation of most wage earners has deteriorated. For some time now, however, workers have been increasingly resorting to strikes to defend their rights. Could we see a development like the one in the 1930s? In Germany, during the Great Depression, the political current that proposed a solution to the economic problems at the expense of minorities and by conquering the living space of other peoples became the opinion leader in society and politics. In the USA, a political current based on a social economic policy prevailed: against the massive resistance of most capital owners, a strong labour movement in alliance with many socially minded intellectuals pushed it through. At that time, socialists and communists had a strong weight in this. This alliance was the backbone of the social reformist Roosevelt administration. US social human rights professor, Richard Wolff asks his former student, who is now reporting on the current actions of workers, if such a reform coalition could develop again. This part of the video starts after minute 14.
Since March of 2020, Payday Report’s Strike Tracker has documented more than 1,700 strikes. Our work covering these walkouts has had an enormous impact, with NPR to The Economist to The Washington Post citing us on a front-page cover story. In 2021, The New York Times even described Payday Report as a publication with “new energy”.
Boots Riley, who directed the hit film “Sorry to Bother You,” also extensively praised our work in noting the strike wave when few people did.
“You could count on one hand the number of outlets, whether they’re mainstream or radical, that pushed this fact,” Riley said of our work tracking more than 1,700 strikes since the beginning of the pandemic.
Esquire called our work tracking the strike wave “invaluable,” and PBS American Portraits, Vice, and Columbia Journalism Review have all profiled our trailblazing work tracking the strike wave.
When Emmy Award winner W. Kamau Bell came to Pittsburgh to film a CNN documentary on white supremacy and environmental racism, he partnered with Payday Report. That documentary was later that nominated for an Emmy.
We raised $96,000 in 2020 with 85% of it coming directly from readers. We are able to do the type of reporting that no other publication does because we are funded primarily by workers.
Mike Elk, Senior Labor Reporter & Founder
A protege of Bill Greider, Mike Elk is an Emmy-nominated labor reporter who covered Lula & the drug war in Brasil and spent years covering union organizing in the South for The Guardian. In 2016, he used his NLRB settlement from being fired illegally for union organizing at Politico to start the crowd-funded Payday Report. The son of retired United Electrical Workers (UE) Director of Organization Gene Elk, he lives in his hometown of Pittsburgh.
He can be reached at melk@paydayreport.com or on Twitter @MikeElk.
Comments