I have a new piece out, in the spring issue of World Policy Journal—”Fascism Rising”—on the rise of France’s National Front and what to do about it.
On Wednesday, workers at Boeing South Carolina will vote on whether to join the Machinists union. I wrote about the high-stakes election for Vice.
Social democrat Benoit Hamon—someone who supports a universal basic income, 32 hour work week and tax on companies that replace workers with automation—upset former prime minister Manuel Valls to win France’s left-wing primary and become the Socialist Party’s presidential nominee this spring. I wrote about what it means in my debut for Jacobin.
I have an essay in Commonweal Magazine out today on how the 2017 French presidential election is shaping up to be a terrifying referendum on the welfare state. Right-wing primary victor François Fillon wants to cut it. The National Front vows to protect it.
On both sides of the Atlantic, you can feel the political winds shifting. Growing from breeze to bluster, they carry the hints of a long-forgotten stench in the West. After Brexit and Trump, they’re on to France, where it’s almost certain that the far-right populist Marine Le Pen will qualify for the second round of the country’s two-step presidential election next May. Continue reading
My first dispatch from Paris, for In These Times, on France’s unpopular labor reforms. I talked to rank-and-file workers, students and labor experts.
Force Ouvrière/Flickr
My latest, in the Village Voice:
“The imbalance of the street corner economy is staggering, a hellish blend of just about all of the worst trends in the U.S. labor market: Workers have little to no bargaining power. There are no health and safety standards. No employment contracts, no stability. The pay is abysmal. Wage theft runs rampant.”
