All posts by Murphy Institute

Home, Labor Studies

Fight for $15 Picks Up Steam

It’s all happening. Last Wednesday, the New York state wage board appointed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo recommended a state-wide minimum wage of $15 for fast food workers in NYC and throughout the state. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has voted for a $15 minimum wage for those working in its unincorporated areas by 2020, which will complement the minimum wage hike for workers in the City passed in May.

Who else is making moves in the $15 direction? The UC system, Kansas City (well, $13), Washington, DC.

Justin Miller wrote up a nice roundup of these developments over at the American Prospect on Friday. As he writes, “All in all, it has been a highly successful week for minimum wage campaigns around the country.”

Indeed.

Photo by MTEA via flickr (CC-BY).

Home, Murphy News

Murphy Institute Featured in Labor Press

The Murphy Institute has had a long and storied past, from its roots in 1984 as a collaboration between CUNY and NYC municipal unions to where it stands today: en route to becoming its own freestanding school within CUNY.

In an article by Marc Bussinch in Labor Press last week entitled The Murphy Institute Survives Bloomberg Era; Pursuing Autonomy within CUNY , Murphy Director Greg Mantsios describes existing Murphy programs and where things might be headed:

A resolution passed at the New York State AFL-CIO convention calls on the university and public officials to reconstitute the Murphy into its own school and there’s been a major push to do that. Close to two dozen labor leaders have written letters to public officials and the CUNY Chancellor urging them to do this. The Assembly Speaker, Carl Heastie, has been pushing hard, as has been Senator Dianne Savino. The legislature allocated $1.5 M in this year’s budget to establish a new school for labor. Hopefully, two or three years from now we’ll be our own school with our own degree programs and hiring our own faculty and controlling our own budget, policy and procedures.

He continues:

[O]ur faculty is engaged in research. We want to start a research rewards program that extends beyond our faculty and offers financial awards to scholars and practitioners outside of our own orbit who are engaged in strategic thinking about the future of the labor movement. In addition, we issue an annual report on union density that looks at national, state and New York City figures and breaks down union density by geography, occupation, race, gender, profession, which unions find very useful for organizing drives. And I think we can play an important role in attracting social justice activists to the labor movement. There are some things we can’t control—like Supreme Court decisions or the economy—but we can control how well we organize ourselves. So we’re trying to provide activists with the skills they need to better fight the good fight whether at the workplace or in the public policy arena.

Read the full article at Labor Press.

Home, International Program for Labor, Climate and Environment

Greece Today: Sean Sweeney on the Future of Greece’s Energy System

Murphy Institute Professor Sean Sweeney just returned from Athens, where he delivered a presentation entitled Third Memorandum or Grexit: What are the implications for the Future of Greece’s Energy System? at the Democracy Rising conference. In his talk, Sweeney explained:

…[E]nergy will be at the heart of the struggles in Greece in the years ahead, Memorandum or Grexit. Energy poverty has grown with austerity and recession, and Syriza has taken measures to protect the poorest and most vulnerable from, for example, electricity disconnections.

But it is clear that the structure of Greece’s energy system also needs to change. The “Institutions”, through the Memorandum, have a clear sense of what restructuring energy means for them—full-on privatization. However, a left restructuring would seek to address two major challenges: firstly, Greece’s dependence on fossil fuel imports and, secondly, how to take advantage of its potential to generate large amounts of renewable energy.

Sweeney presents a thorough analysis of Greece’s choices given the country’s uncertain future and the real, pressing need for “a new economy and a new society.”

Access the full presentation at Trade Unions for Energy Democracy.

Photo by Martin Abegglen via flickr (CC-BY-SA).

ALR Exchange, Home, Labor Studies, Murphy News

ALR Project and China’s Mingde Institute at Collective Labor Disputes Conference

This post was originally featured at alrexchange.org.

China’s Mingde Institute of Labor Relations and CUNY’s Advancing the Field of Labor Relations (ALR) program collaborated for the second time to present a Comparative Collective Labor Disputes Conference between the U.S. and China in Changsha in April 2015. More than 40 Chinese leading scholars, local union officials, governmental arbitrators, and labor attorneys attended the conference. Many active figures in China’s labor relations field participated as speakers and discussants, including professors from Peking University, Wuhan University, Shanghai Business and Finance, Capital University of Business and Economics, China Institute of Industrial Relations, Nanjing University, Sun Yat-san University, and researchers from the local MOHRSS arbitration department from Hunan, Shanghai, Guizhou, etc. Representatives from ILO also commented at the conference.

Representing the U.S. was Diane Frey, Senior Research Consultant at CUNY ALR, who spoke on labor organizing in the U.S., and Richard Fincher, Fellow and Instructor at the Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution at Cornell University, who presented on the U.S. arbitration and mediation system.

You can read more (in Chinese) at:

http://www.jttp.cn/a/report/info/2015/0428/6799.html

Exciting Opportunities, Opportunities

Debra E. Bernhardt Labor Journalism Prize – Call for Entries (2015)

THE NEW YORK LABOR HISTORY ASSOCIATION is pleased to announce this Call for Entries for the First Annual Debra E. Bernhardt Labor Journalism Prize. The deadline for entries is TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2015.

THE BERNHARDT PRIZE IS AN AWARD OF $500 given to an article or series of articles that furthers the understanding of the history of working people. The work should be published – in print or online – in a union or workers’ center publication or by an independent journalist.

By sponsoring this award we hope to inspire more great writing for a general audience about the history of work, workers, and their organizations.

The award is co-sponsored by LaborArts; Metro New York Labor Communications Council; the NYC Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO; and the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at NYU’s Tamiment Library.

The winner will be announced at the Tamiment Library on OCTOBER 15, 2015, during a forum about the history of labor journalism.

We are guided by the vision of the late DEBRA E. BERNHARDT, who worked in so many different realms to share the hidden histories of working people. As head of the Wagner Labor Archives she reached out to an astonishing number of people and organizations, to document undocumented stories and unrecognized contributions, and to make links between past and present.


GUIDELINES

The prize will be given to insightful work that contributes to the understanding of labor history; shows creativity; demonstrates excellence in writing; and adheres to the highest journalistic standards of accuracy.

The work may be an article or a series of articles, published in a labor or a workers’ center publication or by an independent journalist – in print or online – between January 2014 and August 30, 2015.

Entries should include a cover sheet with name of the author and the place and date of publication. Five copies of each article (with cover sheet) should be submitted, to:

New York Labor History Association, Tamiment Library, 10th Floor
Bobst Library NYU
70 Washington Square South New York NY 10012

Questions? Contact info@LaborArts.org or 212-966-4014 ext. 1703

Labor and Community Job Opportunities, Opportunities

ALIGN Seeks Field Coordinator (NYC)

ALIGN: the Alliance for a Greater New York unites labor and community for a more just and sustainable New York. Formed by the merger of New York Jobs with Justice and Urban Agenda, ALIGN builds upon 20 years of creating good jobs, healthy communities, and a more accountable democracy for all New Yorkers. Successes include the “Trades and Residents for Apprenticeship Development and Economic Success” (TRADES) project, which has created over 300 careers in construction for local public housing residents through New York City Public Housing Authority capital repairs; securing one of the nation’s first municipal green buildings policies, which has eliminated over 200,000 metric tons of harmful greenhouse gas emissions; and anchoring the Alliance for a Just Rebuilding and achieving a the Build it Back local hiring program in Sandy-impacted communities. For more information about our work, visit www.alignny.org.

We seek a talented, motivated, and dedicated senior Field Coordinator to join our staff team. This is an exciting time to join our team and be engaged in building an ambitious organization at the forefront of innovative movement building efforts in New York.

Position Description & Responsibilities: The Field Coordinator will report to the Organizing Director and is responsible for:

• Mass Base Field Campaign Strategy: Leading the development of local organizing efforts which will involve extensive field campaign visioning, planning and strategy development done in conjunction with allies and internal policy and communications teams situated at the intersection of climate, race and the economy. The primary focus will be on guiding an emerging “New York Rising” coalition bringing together community and labor partners to implement a mass engagement strategy to develop a broad base of currently unengaged young people and people of color to support policy and issue campaigns.
• Mass Base Field Campaign Development & Implementation: Voter/constituent universe targeting and cutting turf for field (phone & door-to-door) campaigns through Voter Activation Network (VAN). Development and tracking in VAN of a leadership development ladder to increase consistent engagement of mass base.
• Alliance-Building: Strengthening and growing our Mass Engagement Strategy through our “New York Rising” coalition Leadership Team and our longstanding alliance through broad- based institutional and individual relationship-building and maintenance.
• Organizational Development & Leadership: Engaging actively as a member of the staff team by contributing to organizational vision, strategic planning, fundraising, and staff development as well as being a representative for the organization in the NYC movement, within our longstanding alliance and amongst national networks.

Qualifications: A commitment to social, economic and racial justice and the labor movement; Minimum 3 years of experience in a staff position within a community organization and/or labor union; Has strong relationships with and knowledge of economic justice, environmental justice and labor organizations; Knows the New York political landscape and communities; Highly developed racial justice analysis; Ability to independently manage projects from conception to completion, particularly to coordinate direct outreach field campaigns through the Voter Activation Network (VAN), and work as part of a team; Minimum 3 years experience managing civic engagement style field campaigns and a high level of expertise in VAN; Excellent organizational, writing and communication skills; Ability to multi-task and work in a deadline driven environment; Willingness and ability to produce significant impacts however necessary; Ability to work independently.

Terms of Employment: Field Coordinator is a full-time position with health, retirement, vacation, and other benefits. These terms, and others relevant to your employment, are spelled out in the ALIGN Personnel Policy that is available upon request.

Application Process: This position is available immediately. E-mail cover letter and resume to employment@alignny.org. Please put “Field Coordinator” in the subject line of the email. No phone calls please. Applicants who do not meet the minimum requirements will not receive a response.

ALIGN is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Women, LGBT and people of color are strongly encouraged to apply.