I've been using Edelweiss for years to find books to review and it is surreal to see my book in the listings! @harperbooks.bsky.social #tyrannyatwork
Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein
@robinks.com
Freelance journalist (NYT, Baffler, etc) / Writing a book about the American workplace for Harper Books / Newsletter of updates: http://eepurl.com/dxpAjT / robinks.com /
Teachers not only educate our kids but they free parents to work, almost single-handedly enabling our modern work of work. The fact they make up to a quarter less is shameful.
NEW: Teachers earned 25.2% less than comparable college graduates in 2025, according to our new report with @cepr.org. This decades-long teacher pay penalty has taken a heavy toll on public education. 1/4
More than anything, without lists, Twitter is an impossible tool for news gathering and I really can't use it anymore for anything related to the work of journalism.
Like many people who have worked in politics for decades, I am baffled and upset to see candidates who say they are going to try to make things better defeating candidates who say they are trying to make it more or less like it was in the years before things tipped over into Oaf-Style Fascism.
Excited to say book my "Tyranny at Work: Unfreedom and the American Workplace" is now officially due out spring 2027 and available for pre-order. bookshop.org/a/125307/978... #antiwork #unions #antimonopoly
Tyranny at Work
Check out Tyranny at Work - <p><strong>In the tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich and David Graeber, journalist Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein exposes the hidden authoritarianism of the American workplace—...
bookshop.org
Check out the new cover for my new book 'Tyranny at Work: Unfreedom and the American Workplace' due out April 2027 from Harper Books
i'll take shock theater if it means creating broad prosperity
Coming from a chief executive, Franklin Roosevelt’s anti-business rhetoric would shock us today, argues one historian. “With a glee worthy of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson, Roosevelt from the start had luxuriated in shock theatre”
Beyond it being exciting to see an important policy being made real in NYC, the other groundbreaking thing about Mamdani loudly and doggedly supporting universal childcare is that it's not coming from a woman or even a parent. It's being championed by a childless man.
Once upon a time, people with college degrees turned their noses up at unions. Today, the professional-managerial class has turned heel, embraced solidarity, and flocked to labor. Why? I wrote about Noam Scheiber's new book for @newrepublic.com newrepublic.com/article/2087...
The Disillusioned College Grads Turning to the Labor Movement
At workplaces from Starbucks to Apple, highly educated downwardly mobile young people are organizing for better conditions.
newrepublic.com
1/ As I reported my book, I noticed something that has completely changed American life: widespread chronic under-staffing. It leads to, among other things, deadly medication errors at pharmacies, flight delays, messy stores, and the crime wave. From me @prospect.org prospect.org/2026/03/19/u...
Not Enough Workers for the Job - The American Prospect
Understaffing has become an epidemic in American workplaces of all kinds.
prospect.org
1/ As I reported my book, I noticed something that has completely changed American life: widespread chronic under-staffing. It leads to, among other things, deadly medication errors at pharmacies, flight delays, messy stores, and the crime wave. From me @prospect.org prospect.org/2026/03/19/u...
Not Enough Workers for the Job - The American Prospect
Understaffing has become an epidemic in American workplaces of all kinds.
prospect.org
Great piece from @robinks.com on an underrated epidemic in modern America: understaffing. From nursing homes to retail, railroads to air traffic control, nobody hires enough people for the job anymore. prospect.org/2026/03/19/u...
Not Enough Workers for the Job - The American Prospect
Understaffing has become an epidemic in American workplaces of all kinds.
prospect.org
Shorter Jason Furman: it used to be that the tech industry was dominated by only five companies. But AI has changed all that: now there's open competition from five whole companies!
This is AI-as-management
Burger King is launching an AI chatbot that will assess workers' "friendliness" and will be trained to recognize certain words and phrases like “welcome to Burger King,” “please,” and “thank you.” The AI will be programmed into workers' headsets, according to @theverge.com.
Part of the problem here is a long-standing issue of mine: The public gets a huge benefit from beat journalism—but the journalism industry does not, by and large, recognize beat journalism for its value or when it comes to awards and prizes. Those go to investigations and "one big thing" features.
I’m not going to get into this again but the defund the police critique remains complete bullshit yes we can was nonspecific lock her up doesn’t lay out why or for what make america great again couldn’t be less specific this critique is pure reactionary nonsense filtered through pundits
One thing to add: Democrats really shouldn’t fear to be anti-ICE. It’s specific, unlike “defund the police.” If asked, say “Of course I support enforcing the law. ICE isn’t doing that. They’re breaking laws—really important laws, like the Bill of Rights—not enforcing them, which why I oppose ICE.”
Ryszard Kapuscinski's recollections of being a 7 y/o in Poland 1939 as the Red Army was taking over and deporting people to prison camps (from his book "Imperium"). Scary flash backs to today: "In school, during breaks, or when we are returning home in a group, the talk is of deportations."
I don't really like the arguments that Zohran should be careful about opposing the NYPD because of what the NYPD did to BDB's daughter. This is all stuff that any mayoral candidate had to be aware of before taking the job. Anyone to the left of Bloomberg was going to have to take this fight
Aliya Rahman, woman who was dragged out of car by ICE in Minneapolis: "I've spent the last month learning the names of the tendons in my shoulder, because both of my shoulders are torn -- cartilage and tendons. But what I haven't learned is the names of the people who did this to me."
Donald Trump killed two of my constituents. He is a liar and should be ashamed of himself.
Researcher finds that middle managers, fearful of losing their jobs to automation, pretend to use AI in order to keep their jobs. HA HA HA www.techpolicy.press/in-weak-job-...
new from me at @curbed.com: everyone ICE did business with in New York City last year www.curbed.com/article/ice-...
The ICE Contractor Down the Hall
A tour through the Midtown intelligence firms and courier services that help keep the agency running.
curbed.com
For Business Insider, I took a look an emergent literary form: the AI company resignation letter. www.businessinsider.com/resignation-...
Tech workers in a fierce competition to write the best resignation letters
What we can learn from the flood of "why I quit" letters from researchers at Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI.
businessinsider.com
AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says https://gizmodo.com/ai-added-basically-zero-to-us-economic-growth-last-year-goldman-sachs-says-2000725380
AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says
Imported chips and hardware mean the AI investemtns are translating into US GDP growth.
gizmodo.com
I read Gavin Newsom‘s memoir so that you don’t have to. Suffice it to say the book does not achieve what it sets out to do and I’m looking forward to everyone on bluesky being extremely normal on this subject.
Gavin Newsom’s Struggle For Everyman Cred
“Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery” tries to recast a life of privilege in often baffling ways.
newrepublic.com
A lot of people were probably hoping for the Trump administration v 1.0 in which they spent three years just trying to fill basic appointment and only passed a tax cut. I think people prefer a president who does nothing.
triple yikes
I would love to see the pro-natalist Silicon Valley types respond to the fact that a family with two kids needs to make over $400k to comfortably afford childcare (under 7% of income). www.lendingtree.com/debt-consoli...
Households With 2 Kids Need to Earn Average of $402,708 to Comfortably Afford Child Care
Families don’t make enough on average to afford child care for two children, according to government benchmarks.
lendingtree.com