It’s Time for a New Progressive Era, With Informal Workers at the Center

It’s Time for a New Progressive Era, With Informal Workers at the Center

A century ago, on the heels of another deadly pandemic, an estimated 10,000 coal workers in West Virginia banded together to march in protest against the cruelty and injustice they experienced working in the mines. It was America’s largest labor uprising and was unusual for that segregated time in uniting Black, white and immigrant workers behind one cause. The forces of business and government combined to crush their rebellion, but not the spirit behind it, which eventually led to many of the protections we take for granted today, like the 40-hour week and minimum wage.



Today we have new versions of the struggle between the coal barons and suffering miners in various forms across the global economy. The weak regulations and eroding labor protections of the globalized economy have contributed to grotesque inequality and concentration of wealth and the mass migrations of people desperate for economic security. Around the world, the working poor are as vulnerable as ever. If there is going to be a new Progressive Era, it needs to start with the world’s informal workers.











Informal work is the essential service that billions of people give to a world that barely notices.