workers rights
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Overtime Changes Could Upend Publishing Industry Norms
Changes to overtime laws could have a big impact the way the publishing industry pays staff. Salaried employees earning less than $47,476 a year will be entitled to overtime pay at a rate of one and a half times their…
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Living Wages Cost More Money
A new study has revealed why academic adjuncts are paid so little: living wages would cost universities a lot more money. A new study says that converting adjunct faculty to tenure track positions would cost $27 billion dollars. The study…
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The Big Idea: Mark Bittman
Suzanne Koven talks to food journalist, author, and activist Mark Bittman about his “Big Idea”—how food has changed in the last fifty years, and how to teach our children to eat better.
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The Adjunct Crisis
Nearly a third of all adjunct college faculty live below the poverty line. But its not just low pay that make these jobs miserable: lack of job security, long hours, and the expectation of filling roles that were once tenured,…
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The Rumpus Interview with Melissa Gira Grant
Melissa Gira Grant talks sex workers’ rights, labor politics, the novelty of women’s sexuality, and her book, Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work.
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Fringe Benefits
A pervasive, and frustrating, myth is that dancing pays enough for us to stop complaining—that we get paid enough to be cool with however we’re treated. But that’s not true. For the Times, Rumpus friend and contributor Antonia Crane details the…
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Jill Talbot
The author of The Way We Weren’t talks about why she decided to write about being a single mother, the effect it’s had on her daughter, and the adjunct crisis.
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Contingent Justice
LARB’s Marginalia Review of Books recently published a series of essays on the future of tenure. While addressing the academic labor crisis, the series digs deeply into our wider national labor crisis and the effects of abandoning permanent employment for…
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World Cup Slaves: A Rumpus Roundup
Earlier today, the United States Attorney General charged 14 FIFA officials with 47 counts of corruption, racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering. FIFA is the international association that oversees football (soccer), including the World Cup. Pundits have already begun to…
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Santa’s Little Helper
Santa’s elves spend all year manufacturing low-cost holiday decorations to bring Westerners Christmas cheer. The only problem? They aren’t elves, but Chinese factory workers. The Guardian explores life in the Chinese “Christmas Village” responsible for 60% of the world’s holiday…
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Adjunct Faculty Plan Walk Out
Adjunct college faculty are at last taking a stand against abominable work conditions and low pay by planning a national walk out on February 25, 2015. Unlike their tenured counterparts, adjuncts lack protection from retributive firing should they follow through.…
