labor

July 21, 2022 - Longtime labor journalist David Moberg passed away this week at the age of 78. In his memory, we're republishing a story about Mississippi poultry workers he contributed to a 1980 anthology on labor history published by Southern Exposure, the print forerunner to Facing South.

March 11, 2021 - Passed by the House earlier this week and championed by President Biden, the pro-labor law could break the stranglehold that right-to-work laws adopted under Jim Crow have placed on workers' power in the region. But it has to get through the Senate first.

September 19, 2019 - Workers from across the low-wage economy convened in Durham, North Carolina, recently to discuss how to build on victories in the fight for a livable wage and union rights in the region.  

August 29, 2019 - Strikes and walkouts helped many teachers across the South secure pay raises this school year. But the South still invests relatively little in public education compared to the rest of the country.

February 2, 2018 - Despite losing two high-profile organizing campaigns in Mississippi and South Carolina last year, labor unions gained 130,000 members in the South in 2017.

September 22, 2017 - MaryBe McMillan, who this month was elected the first woman president of the North Carolina AFL-CIO, talks to Facing South about why unions are important today, how they can win in the South, and labor's key role in building a progressive political movement.

August 11, 2017 - Labor lost a high-profile campaign to unionize auto workers at Nissan plant in Mississippi last week. But the union says it isn't going away, pointing to other historic Southern labor drives that often took multiple elections to win.

March 30, 2017 - At the time of his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis, Tennessee, preparing to march with the city's striking sanitation workers. Labor protests on the anniversary of his death next week will continue the work he was doing during his final days to connect race and class.

July 21, 2016 - Half a million eligible voters have moved to North Carolina in the past five years. They are bringing new views to the state while at the same time grappling with its complicated new voting requirements.

June 2, 2016 - The hospitality industry is thriving in the tourist mecca of Nashville, Tennessee, but the people who do the hard work of keeping the city's hotels clean are not sharing in the prosperity and often face appalling work conditions, a new report finds.