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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 currently a visiting researcher at the Russell Sage Foundation. He is the author of The Big Squeeze: Tough Time for the American Worker and is currently working on a book about the future of America's workers.

Recent Articles

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

Offshoring Silicon Valley

American computer software engineers go the way of factory workers.

Steven GreenhouseMay 23, 2008
In The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, Steven Greenhouse, the veteran New York Times labor writer, provides a panoramic picture of American workers struggling with an economic order that demands more of them while offering them less -- less income, less security, less leisure time, less dignity -- in return. One of the sectors he reports on -- high-tech -- was supposed to be one part of the economy where American workers could still flourish. Over the past decade, however, that has proven not to be the case. --Harold Meyerson The e-mail seemed innocent enough, but something about it worried Myra Bronstein. It instructed her and the 17 other quality-assurance engineers -- a fancy term for software testers -- to report to the company's boardroom the next morning. No way that can be good , she told herself. At the time, Myra, then 47, was a senior quality-assurance engineer at WatchMark, a company that developed sophisticated software for cell phone companies. She and...

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