Author Profile
Stephen Franklin

Stephen Franklin, former labor and workplace reporter for the Chicago Tribune, was until recently the ethnic media project director with Public Narrative in Chicago. He is the author of Three Strikes: Labor’s Heartland Losses and What They Mean for Working Americans (2002), and has reported throughout the United States and the Middle East. He can be reached via e-mail at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Franklin, who speaks Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew and Spanish, spent time in Egypt teaching journalists while on a Knight International Press Fellowship. He has received two Lisagor awards for business reporting and a George Polk Award for consumer interest reporting with Marcia Stepanek at the Detroit Free Press in 1983. Franklin lives on the North Side of Chicago with his wife, director of a local social services agency. The couple have two children.
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After 41 Years, The Teamsters Reform Movement Is Finally Building Power
In the beginning, Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) was full of spunk. But they didn’t have any union leaders on their side, nor many rank and file supporters, nor much... MORE
Working · October 26, 2017
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One Taxi Driver’s Story of Trying to Survive in the Age of Uber
It’s 4 p.m. and Nnamdi Uwazie has taken in only $122, which means he has another five hours to drive to just cover his daily costs. Another 15-hour day in the cab... MORE
Working · July 28, 2017
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A Day in the Life of a Day Laborer
CHICAGO—Come sunrise, the men fill the street corner, among them Luis, quietly sitting by himself, nurturing hopes for work today. There was no work yesterday, nothing the day before and nothing... MORE
Working · June 15, 2017
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Meet the Workers Who Took Overnight Buses to Bring the Fight for 15 to McDonald’s Stockholders
As the line of marchers grew and drummers and bands loudly revved up, Marcus Stone, an $8 an hour McDonald’s cook, was pumped. “I believe it is going to happen, if... MORE
Working · May 24, 2017
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Why White Working Class Americans Are Dying “Deaths of Despair”
He was alone and miserable, cleaning up a strike station in Peoria, Illinois, where members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) had lived in the heat and the cold. The UAW had just... MORE
Working · March 25, 2017
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The War on Workers’ Comp
For nearly a century, millions of workers have endured punishing jobs in construction, mining and factory work—jobs with high levels of work-related disability and injury. As a tradeoff for the dangers,... MORE
Working · June 13, 2016
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‘I Didn’t See These Times Coming’: The Economic Despair Behind the Rise in Blue-Collar Deaths
His hope had turned to dust. He had lost a good union job when his factory shut down. He refused to take welfare, despite a long and fruitless job search, and finally landed... MORE
Working · December 10, 2015
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Domestic Workers Emerging from the Shadows
Domestic workers’ stories about how they are cheated out of their wages, overworked or not treated with respect often move Ania Jakubek. But every so often she hears a truly troubling story... MORE
Working · November 13, 2014
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Lawyer: ‘We Should Stay on the Parapets and Keep Fighting’
For three years in the early 1970s, journalist Studs Terkel gathered stories from a variety of American workers. He then compiled them into Working, an oral-history collection that went... MORE
Working · August 11, 2014
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Leslie Orear, 103, Helped Bring Together Black and White Packinghouse Workers in the 1930s
Leslie Orear, a lifelong labor activist, died in Chicago on May 30 at the age of 103. After entering the Chicago stockyards at a time when the idea of unions for blue-collar workers was spreading... MORE
Working · June 4, 2014