Two labor journalists discuss what the Great Resignation, union organization and hybrid models mean for the future of work.

Work is a huge part of American life. For most people, it takes up more than a third of their days, at least. And it provides the paychecks that meet their everyday needs. And in America it also provides health insurance. Then, of course, there is the fact that a person’s identity is tightly aligned to what they do when they are on the clock.

So when the pandemic came and upended work, it really disrupted so much more. The reverberations have been significant and include the so-called Great Resignation and newly energized movement toward organized labor. Management, meanwhile, is trying to figure out how to return to some form of normalcy, or whether that is even possible. 

All of these issues are of high interest to the journalists appearing on his episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Eyal Press and Sarah Jaffe. Both have been studying labor in America since before the pandemic and have recently authored books on different aspects of work in America. 

In this conversation with This Changes Everything host Sara Bernard they explore what the recent disruption has revealed about work in America and whether our current moment is a transformational one.

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Credits

Host: Mark Baumgarten

Producer: Sara Bernard

Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara

Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph