Suburbs, sprawl, and organising
In his latest Substack newsletter , US socialist and labour-movement writer and activist Eric Blanc writes about the challenges posed for workplace organisation by the fact that many more workers live over wider areas than in the past. He notes that the average American today commutes 20.5 miles to work each way — a 27 per cent commute time increase since 1980 (the first year the US Census began tracking the figure). Britain gives the same picture for average work-commute distances. 1890-99: 2.23 miles; 1930-39: 4.34 miles; 1999-98: 9.07 miles; 2019: 11.5 miles. This means that union...