Today in 1793 Eli Whitney submitted his patent for the cotton gin, an invention that reshaped American labor by accelerating the rise of the industrial factory system in the North and dramatically expanding the brutal plantation slavery system in the South. The fight to tame the conditions industrial labor wrought, in part, by the cotton gin, remains underway today.
• One year after Janus, unions are flush • How to protect the right to organize • Pro women hockey players form a union • States with $15 min. wage laws have doubled • The man who put public-employee unions on the map • House passes bill to help workers with retirement savings • YRC Worldwide, Teamsters enter into five-year contract • Hoffa: Teens driving trucks interstate would jeopardize safety • Economists remain worried about slow-growing middle class