Union membership may be at an all-time low in America, but in the past five years, organized labor actions have become more commonplace than at any time since the 1980s. While conservative judges and legislatures have been working to weaken unions, their members persist in their activism—striking for higher wages, better education budgets and equitable treatment during the pandemic.
But as Luke Ottenhof wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review in June, a rash of worker uprisings that were often meant to command media attention were met by a mainstream press that has all but abandoned labor as a beat. Longtime New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse took a buyout from the paper in 2014, and as Politico noted, that left the Wall Street Journal’s Melanie Trottman as the only remaining full-time labor journalist at a major American paper. But not for long—Trottman left the Journal two years later. The paper still employs Eric Morath, who writes on the American workforce, though from a decidedly Wall Street Journal point of view (lots of employment statistics, not so many union drives).
While many large national newspapers have retreated from covering unions, a collection of smaller online publications and dedicated journalists have devoted themselves to chronicling the nation’s recently awakened labor movement. They don’t always bring the “view from nowhere” style of objectivity favored by conventional newsrooms, but right now, they’re pretty much the only game in town if you want to follow “business reporting from the perspective of human beings,” as In These Times writer Hamilton Nolan described his work to the Columbia Journalism Review.
This includes reporters like David Jamieson of the Huffington Post, who is dedicated to labor coverage that includes stories on strikes, workplace safety, and challenges faced by the rank and file. Two other dedicated labor reporters for mainstream outlets are Michael Sainato, a frequent contributor to The Guardian who also writes the Labor Report newsletter for Substack, and Josh Eidelson of Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, some smaller progressive publications employ reporters and columnists tasked with covering labor news. Nolan, a veteran of the Gawker world who helped organize that publication’s union in 2015, reports and comments extensively for In These Times on all things union-related. In the same universe of lefty labor reporters are Michelle Chen and Sarah Jaffe of Dissent, both union devotees and the co-hosts of the Belabored podcast. Chen is also a contributing editor at The Nation, while Jaffe is the author of Necessary Trouble, a book that covers recent protest movements, and the forthcoming Work Won’t Love You Back, which dissects people’s unhealthy devotion to their jobs.
More progressive coverage of labor can be found at The American Prospect, the small, D.C.-based policy magazine known for its devotion to unions throughout even the neoliberal Clinton years. The Prospect’s labor coverage includes reporting by many of the magazine’s youngest staffers, led by longtime editors Harold Meyerson and Robert Kuttner. Rachel Cohen, a Prospect alum and expert in education, has written extensively on teacher’s unions and the intersection of schools and labor for a number of publications, most frequently The Intercept. At Jacobin, editor Alex Press has built a beat writing about the needs of workers across the spectrum, from brewers to strippers and vegan food producers, emphasizing the importance of fair treatment in even the most unconventional workplaces.
