Ruth Milkman and Stephanie Luce have published their annual report on the geographic, demographic, and occupational makeup of union membership in New York City, New York State, and the nation. This new study considers the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdowns, which generated vast job losses across the United States. The New York City metropolitan area, where the pandemic’s impact was felt earlier than elsewhere in the country, suffered severe job losses in 2020. The authors note that the decline in employment among women workers was greater than among men—in sharp contrast to the Great Recession, which hit men harder. Read State of the Unions 2021, listen to Profs. Milkman and Luce discuss their findings on SLU’s podcast, Reinventing Solidarity, or watch them on SLU’s TV show, City Works.

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The 10th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street generated a flurry of publication and commentary from SLU’s faculty. Penny Lewis, Stephanie Luce and Ruth Milkman published a retrospective of the Occupy Wall Street movement in The Nation: “Did Occupy Wall Street Make a Difference?” and discussed it on a number of podcasts including Jon Weiner’s Start Making Sense, Make Me Smart with Kai and Molly on Marketplace, and Upstream. Professor Milkman also commented on the movement’s legacy with SLU Distinguished Alumna Nastaran Mohit of NewsGuild on Belabored.

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Juan Battle has been particularly prolific this year. Here is a short list of his publications, written with others:

• “Physical Activity and GPA: Results from a National Sample of Black Students“, Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment (with Eric Weston and Howard Zeng).
• “Refugee Higher Education & Participatory Action Research Methods: Lessons Learned From the Field,” Radical Teacher (with H. Yanay).
• “Mathematics Identity and Achievement Among Black Students,” School Science and Mathematics (with Shawanda Chapton, and L.Gonzalez).
• “Married or Divorced?: Outcomes on Black Student Educational Attainment.” The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 89(1): 9-23 (with Shawnda Chapman, and CalvinJohn Smiley)
• “Aint Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Black LGBT Sociopolitical Involvement.” Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships, Vol. 7(2): 1-23, (with Nicole Lewis and Robert Peterson).
• “Relationships between Sports, Physical Activity Participation, and Phys-Ed GPA: Results and Analyses from a National Sample of Asian American Students. Journal of Physical Education and Sport, Vol. 21(3), 1469-1478 (with Robert Weston and Howard Zeng).
• “Familia y Educación: A Quantitative Assessment of the Impact of Parental Configuration on Educational Attainment for a National Sample of Latinx Students,” Race Ethnicity and Education, Vol. 23(1): 21-38 (with CalvinJohn Smiley).

• Deepak Bhargava and Ruth Milkman, “Why Mass Immigration Is the Key to American Renewal, American Prospect.

• Ofronama Biu, Christopher Famighetti, and Darrick Hamilton, “Examining the differential impact of recessions and recovery across race and gender for working versus professional class workers,The ANNALS of The American Academy of Political Science.

• Eric Blanc, Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire 1882-1917 (Brill, 2021).

• Ellen Dichner was interviewed for a Labor Day article about workers’ rights by WalletHub. She is also quoted in “A New Day for Workers’ Rights” in The Daily Poster.

• Josh Freeman and Steve Fraser, “Hope for Labor at the End of History,” Dissent, Fall 2021.

• SLU Alum Jonah Furman is now working at Labor Notes! Here is one of his recent articles: “‘We’re Sick of Giving Away Our Future’: An Interview with Kellogg Strike Leaders.” Jonah also produces the newsletter “Who Gets the Bird?.”

• Sarah Hughes is also working at Labor Notes. Read her most recent pieces, Massachusetts Nurses Face Down For-Profit Health Care Giant Tenet in Daring Strike and ‘If Your House Is On Fire You Run’: Workers Strike for Safety At Understaffed Mental Health Center.”

• Marianne Garneau (LeNabat), “There Oughta Be a Law,” and (with Catherine Kemp) Workplace Struggles are Political,” Organizing Work.

• Stephanie Luce, “The Living Wage, Fight for $15, and Low Wage Worker Campaigns in the U.S.,” in The Living Wage: Advancing a Global Movement, edited by Tony Dobbins and Peter Prowse, Routledge, 2021, and “Racial Justice is Vital to Union Growth,” Democratic Left.

• Ruth Milkman and Veronica Terriquez, “Immigrant and Refugee Youth Organizing in Solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives,” Gender and Society.

• Nadia Rahman, “U.S. Health Care: Undocumented Immigrants Shut Out,” New Labor Forum.

• Michael Rymer, “The Linguist in the Writing Center: A Primer on Textual Analysis in Writing Center Studies,” The Writing Center Journal.

• Erica Smiley, “Domestic Workers Are Using the Gig Economy Against Itself,” The Nation.

• Samir Sonti, “The Crises of US Labour,” The Socialist Register 2022, edited by Greg Albo and Colin Leys.

• Joseph van der Naald and William A. Herbert, “Graduate Student Employee Unionization in the Second Gilded Age.” Pp. 221-46 in Revaluing Work(ers): Toward a Democratic and Sustainable Future, edited by T. Schulze-Cleven and T Vachon. Champaign, IL: Labor and Employment Relations Association.