The restaurant industry is one of the largest and fastest growing private employers in the country.  But just as swinging doors often separate patrons from the kitchen, the working lives of 13.5 million restaurant workers — a largely non-union workforce — remain out of sight. In four cities, cooks, dishwashers, servers, hosts, and busers are […]

Returning to school after winter break, Austin Garrido found that Uloop, an online marketplace for college students, had cut his hourly pay.  Elsewhere on the University of California-Polytechnic’s campus in Pomona, his co-worker Sarah Doolittle also discovered a light paycheck. Unhappy about $8 an hour and shrunken bonuses from the Craigslist-type outfit, the two posted […]

One at a time, the teachers came out of the sub-zero January cold and into the lobby of Wayne State University’s McGregor Hall in Detroit.  By the time the board of governors meeting began — where the teachers had three minutes total to detail their concerns — they were together in force. Before they went […]