Release of Adam Reich and Peter Bearman’s new book, Working for Respect: Community and Conflict at Walmart
Working for Respect is an examination of the position of workers in places like Walmart in the struggle for economic and social justice. Reich and Bearman focus on the unique position of Walmart in the American workforce and what this model poses for the future of labor. One possible future which they discuss, Walmartism, looks at the ways that increasingly centralized control limits workers’ ability to control their working conditions and their lives.
By matching student activists with the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart), Reich and Bearman pursue questions of collective identity, the role of traditional unions and the relationship between social ties and social change culminating in this book which stands as an important reflection on the development and future of the modern workplace.