Michael D. Yates (born 1946) is an economist and a labor educator, and editorial director of the socialist publishing house Monthly Review Press.
[1] Yates was born in a small coal mining town about 40 miles north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
His grandmother worked on a barge boat as a cook and a servant for families in Manhattan, Newport, and other wealthy enclaves.
The first Yates home did not have hot running water or an indoor toilet, and was owned by the mining company.
With the encouragement of an academic advisor, he applied for a teaching position at UP's satellite campus in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
[citation needed] He taught for many years in the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where his students were union officers and members.
Monthly Review Press published Yates' first book, Longer Hours, Fewer Jobs: Employment and Unemployment in the United States.
He and his wife began to live an itinerant existence, spending significant amounts of time in Yellowstone National Park, Manhattan, Miami Beach and Portland, Oregon.