Labor of Love: A Sit-down with America’s Most Celebrated Labor Reporter—with Steven Greenhouse

OFF-KILTER with Rebecca Vallas

For this week’s episode of Off-Kilter, Rebecca sat down with longtime labor journalist Steven Greenhouse. He’s someone who really needs no introduction after spending thirty-one years at the New York Times, eighteen of which he spent covering the labor beat, until 2014. He’s also the author of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker and Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present and Future of American Labor. And these days he’s a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, where he writes about wages and working conditions, labor organizing, and other workplace issues. In a conversation recorded the day after Labor Day, they had a far-ranging chat about the history of Labor Day in the United States; how he got into labor reporting; the rise of the U.S. labor movement and what’s behind recent declines in union participation; some of the most exciting recent developments within American labor, including successful efforts to organize Starbucks and Amazon workers; why he’s especially excited about worker-to-worker organizing as part of the future of the labor movement; and lots more.

Links from this episode:

• Follow Steve on Twitter/X at @greenhousenyt

• Check out Steve’s books The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker and Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present and Future of American Labor

• Here’s Steve’s piece on worker-to-worker organizing and the future of American labor

• Here’s his piece on union-busting at Starbucks and the holes in federal labor law that have been allowing it to happen

• And find all of Steve’s writing for TCF here