Photo Gallery

The New Labor Movement in Pictures

Professor Annelise Orleck and photographer Liz Cooke document the struggles of low-wage workers and activists around the globe.

In 2015, Dartmouth history professor Annelise Orleck and photographer Liz Cooke traveled the world interviewing and photographing low-wage workers and activists. The resulting book, “We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now”: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages (Beacon Press, 2018), chronicles their journey and tells the story of globalization and resistance from the point of view of the workers themselves: hotel housekeepers, home health aides, fast-food workers, adjunct professors, garment workers, and berry-pickers. A selection of images from the book were on display in the Black Family Visual Arts Center’s Nearburg Gallery in fall 2018.

All photos courtesy Liz Cooke

Fight for $15 began as a movement by fast-food employees but quickly spread to other low-wage workers, including home health aides, adjunct faculty, garment workers, hotel housekeepers, and airport workers.
In 2012, Venanzi Luna (right) led the first strike against a Walmart in the U.S. In 2015, Denise Barlage (left) led a hunger strike in front of the Manhattan apartment of Walmart heiress Alice Walton.
Low-wage workers and activists gathered in New York City on April 15, 2015, to demand a living wage and improved workplace conditions. Similar actions were held in cities around the world.
New York’s unionized home-care and hospital workers march at the Fight for $15 protest on April 15, 2015, when low-wage workers led strikes and rallies in 250 U.S. cities and 40 countries on six continents.
Jenny Mills, an activist with Organization United for Respect at Walmart, has been living in her car for more than two years. Many 21st-century low-wage workers are homeless.
McDonald’s worker Bleu Rainier represents a new generation of activists that unites the labor movement, Black Lives Matter, and #MeToo.
Garment workers Danu (left), Sreypon, and Dany (right) are the local union presidents of a sweater factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Occupants of a shantytown in Manila, Philippines, work day and night under oppressive conditions, including overcrowding and lack of electricity and plumbing. Here women peel garlic in near darkness.
Kalpona Akter, a former garment worker and executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, is a leading force in the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Margarida, a Oaxacan berry-picker in Oxnard, California, says she benefitted from a strike that secured better wages, bathrooms, and water for workers in the fields.
Prince Jackson (left) and Canute Drayton organized a union of 8,000 New York-area airport workers in 2016.
Thareth Sok (left) and Vun Em are organizers for United Sisterhood Alliance in Phnom Penh. Em is also the lead singer for the garment workers’ Messenger Band.