Abstract
Course Overview Since the time it was first offered in the early 2000s, HS 110A has examined how wealth, inequality and power play out in modern society. It has explored those questions through examining different social outcomes and different disciplinary lenses. This year, we return to the roots of HS 110A by focusing on how those forces play out at work. In some ways, working people in 2024 face the most promising outlook in recent memory. After enduring deep job losses arising from the pandemic, the demand for workers in the US labor market surged to record high levels. This has provided leverage to many workers who had not experienced it in decades—including workers of color who benefited little and late in past economic recoveries. Opportunities for exercising voice at the workplace are also at a high watermark. A new era of voice is evidenced by high profile union organizing drives and wins at major employers including Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joes, and REI. Union drives have also won support on college campuses across the country—including here at Brandeis. Strikes in the entertainment, auto, logistics, health and hotel industries have proven successful for achieving major advances for workers and have garnered wide scale public support. And public approval ratings for labor unions and the work they do stands at highest levels in decades. But this moment comes after more than 40 years of eroding worker rights and protections and weakened worker leverage in the labor market. Capital market pressures often push businesses to reduce labor costs and worker leverage. Longstanding labor laws make union organizing difficult and many core employment laws that provide rights and protections are undermined by legislative efforts that limit who is protected by them. Employment laws that provide rights and protections are undermined by legislative efforts—many successful at the state level—to shift the boundaries of who is protected by them. Under-resourced enforcement agencies at the federal and state level create a gap between rights in law and those experienced at work. And new digital technologies have enabled business models that further many of the above forces. This course will examine what drives conditions at work, from wages to discrimination to worker voice. It will explore how these conditions are driven by economic and business decisions, government policies, union and worker advocacy and worker norms and beliefs. And