The Economics of Work
Class | Available
February 21, 2026
Understanding the economy and examining your day-to-day and long-term social conditions and worker rights. How much power do you have as a worker in the US? Analyzing how the system works will position workers for better strategy and tactics in labor organizing. Topics will include the growth of “right to work” laws, gig work, and automation. We will also examine why the minimum wage has not kept up with the cost of living, and current attacks against prevailing wage. We will consider race, gender, immigrant status, and the impact of globalization on changing working conditions, and how resource distribution at the local, state, and national levels matters for organizing for a better future.
Augustus Wood
Prof. Wood is a scholar of political economy and gentrification, labor, and social movements in late 20th and early 21st Century African American urban history. Dr. Wood has authored articles that appear in the Labor Studies Journal. He is the editor of the special edition of Labor Studies Journal on Black Workers and COVID. He is a contributor on Routledge’s forthcoming Encyclopedia of Antiracism. He is the former two-term president of the Graduate Employees Organization Local 6300 at the University of Illinois. He hosts the Radio Free Labor program on 90.1 FM WEFT Champaign Radio and the Podcast “Off the Shelf” with the Humanities Research Institute.