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Steven Greenhouse

Steven Greenhouse was a reporter at The New York Times for 31 years and was its labor and workplace reporter from 1995 to 2014. He is the author of The Big Squeeze: Tough Time for the American Worker, and his new book, Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor, will be published next year. 

Recent Articles

Trump's Carrier Pigeons

The fear of Donald Trump's wrath may have been the biggest factor prompting Carrier to drop plans to move its Indianapolis plant to Mexico. Had President Obama gone that route, Republicans would have assailed him for meddling in the free market.

Steven GreenhouseDec 02, 2016
(Photo: AP/Darron Cummings)
(Photo: Darron Cummings) President-elect Trump speaks at Carrier Corp. on December 1, 2016, in Indianapolis. S omething in President-elect Donald Trump’s deal to save 800 Carrier jobs doesn’t add up. When Carrier announced in February that it would shutter its Indianapolis factory and move the operation to Monterrey, Mexico, it said the move would save $65 million a year. When you pay your Indiana workers $22 an hour on average and pay your workers in Mexico $3 an hour, that saves a lot of money. During the presidential campaign, Trump had singled out Carrier for attack, railing against it for turning its back on America. Trump even vowed to somehow keep 100 percent of the Carrier jobs in Indiana. To help Trump save the 800 jobs, Indiana officials agreed this week to give Carrier $7 million in state incentives over a decade. That’s a lot less than the $65 million that Carrier would save annually by moving operations to Mexico. This raises questions about what really persuaded Carrier...

Taking Trump’s Populism Seriously

While the Donald had a powerful message for white workers, Clinton failed to convey a robust pro-worker stance.

Steven GreenhouseNov 10, 2016
AP Photo/Julie Jacobson
AP Photo/Julie Jacobson Supporters arrive at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's election night rally, Tuesday, November 8, 2016, in New York. I n small cities and towns across the nation, working-class whites unloosed a thunderbolt on Tuesday, giving a stunning victory to Donald Trump. “A primal scream,” was how David Axelrod described it. Working-class whites were clearly angry—about stagnating incomes, shuttered factories, and a perception that Washington was rigged against them. And they largely lined up behind Donald Trump, the candidate who voiced and channeled their anger, and not behind Hillary Clinton, a far more cerebral and measured candidate. By promising to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, to impose a 35 percent tariff on cars assembled in Mexico and to get tough on China trade, Trump came across as a raging fighter for American workers—even if the solutions he offered, such as tariffs that could spark a trade war, could plunge the nation into recession...

On Demand, and Demanding Their Rights

Gig workers in the Uber economy are organizing to win more say over their jobs—and writing a new chapter in American labor history.

Steven Greenhouse | June 28, 2016

A Safety Net for On-Demand Workers?

A new paper suggests how to better regulate the gig economy, but the plan may only reinforce its worst abuses. 

Steven GreenhouseDec 08, 2015
MikeDotta/Shutterstock
MikeDotta/Shutterstock An Uber cab in New York City. F or many Americans who care about how workers are treated, their biggest concern about the much-ballyhooed “on-demand” economy is the way that Uber, Lyft, and other “gig economy” companies have rushed to treat their workers as independent contractors. For employers, the advantages of this strategy are huge (as I explain in my deep dive for the Prospect about Uber’s questionable labor practices): You don’t have to follow minimum wage, overtime, or employment discrimination laws, you don’t have to make employer contributions to Social Security, Medicare, or unemployment insurance, and your workers can’t unionize. A new paper , released on Monday, has some provocative recommendations about how to deal with this phenomenon—the nation’s oh-so-cool on-demand companies scurrying to dodge all or nearly all responsibilities and obligations to their workers. The paper posits that workers who get their work through an app or platform—like...

On the Road to Nowhere

Uber drivers are getting creative in their fight for basic workplace rights. 

Steven Greenhouse | December 7, 2015

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