Belabored Podcast #52: Fast Food Local, with Tsedeye Gebreselassie

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here or on Stitcher here. Check out the full Belabored archive here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. In the latest escalation of the low-wage workers’ movement, fast food workers went out on strike around the world this week, staging actions in a reported 230 cities in thirty-three countries. But though their problems may be global, the solutions often come locally. On that note, Sarah and Michelle speak with Tsedeye Gebreselassie, a staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project, about her research on low-wage work, local minimum wage ordinances, and why it’s important for workers to lead this struggle.  We also report on miners’ deaths abroad and at home, teachers’ continuing resistance to the high-stakes testing regime, and unionizing workers at JFK airport. Finally, for “Argh,” we take a look at the responses to Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book on inequality and think about women, art, and domestic work.  News West Virginia Mine Had History of Safety Problems Mineworkers’ Fight against Peabody Energy At Least 274 Die in Turkish Mine Disaster United: NY Area Airport Workers Join Union Sarah: Brooklyn Teachers Strike a Blow Against Excessive Testing with May Day Boycott Sarah: Reform Candidate Wins Massachusetts Teachers Association Presidency in Election Upset Michelle: #FastFoodGlobal: How the International Struggle Against McDonald’s Could Bring a $15 Minimum Wage to New York City Conversation with Tsedeye Gebreselassie Tsedeye Gebreselassie at the National Employment Law Project Tsedeye Gebreselassie on New York’s Minimum Wage Holdups Argh, I Wish I’d Written That! Michelle: Thomas Frank, “The Problem with Thomas Piketty” (Salon) and Robert Kuttner, “What Piketty Leaves Out”(The American Prospect) Sarah: Rose Lichter-Marck, “Vivian Maier and the Problem of Difficult Women” (The New Yorker) The post Belabored Podcast #52: Fast Food Local, with Tsedeye Gebreselassie appeared first on Dissent Magazine.