Annelise Orleck

Annelise Orleck is a historian of labor, social movements, women, and economic inequality. We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now reports on low-wage workers organizing across the United States and in countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Mexico, South Africa, and the Philippines. Drawing on more than 140 interviews, Orleck follows restaurant employees, farmers, retail workers, hotel staff, caregivers, airport workers, and teachers who challenge unsafe conditions and poverty wages. The 2018 Beacon Press edition includes photographs by Liz Cooke. The global range grows from Orleck’s earlier scholarship on welfare rights, working women, and grassroots activism, while its close attention to individual organizers keeps broad economic arguments tied to lived experience. We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now is therefore both contemporary labor history and a comparative account of movement building. It shows how workers separated by occupation and geography develop related demands for dignity, security, representation, and control over the conditions under which they work.