On March 19th, Murphy Professor Sean Sweeney participated in a panel hosted by 350NYC and New York Society for Ethical Culture about COP21, the global climate treaty conference taking place in Paris in December 2015.
Sweeney was joined by Jeffrey Salim Waheed – Representative of Maldives to the UN; Tamar Lawrence-Samuel, Associate Research Director at Corporate Accountability International; Reinhard Krapp – Economic Department, UN Mission of Germany to the United Nations; and City Council member Helen Rosenthal. The panel was moderated by Claire Vondrich and introduced by Lyna Hinkel of 350NYC. Video by Joe Friendly.
Sean Sweeney recently joined the Murphy Institute to direct the International Program for Labor, Climate and the Environment. This past December, Sweeney spoke with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! about the potential effects of the since-vetoed Keystone XL pipeline on job creation. See the video here.
Had Lynas attended the alternative people’s summit at the COP 20 climate change talks in Lima last year, he would have heard a succession of speakers from Latin America’s indigenous communities rejecting development models imposed on them by transnational capital. They are in the frontline of the fight against climate change and are struggling to stop the destruction of their environment by mining and mono-crop agriculture for export. They would not see themselves in terms of left or right, but fully understand that an economic model based on infinite growth, with the commensurate depletion of the planet’s natural resources, is incompatible with saving the Earth from the catastrophic effects of global warming.
This does not mean sufficient energy cannot be provided for the needs of future generations, but that it must be responsibly sourced and publicly owned instead of being left to market forces and monolithic corporations whose priorities lie in ripping off consumers and making money out of burning fossil fuels. As an energy trade union, we support the necessary, just transition to a low-carbon economy, and are members of the global network Trade Unions for Energy Democracy. As the slogan read in Lima: “Let’s change the system – not the climate.”
This month, DC37’s Public Employee Press features an article by Mike Lee on current Murphy Institute students Andra Maria Cojoc, Jerome B. Lane Jr., Jeffrey Wilson and Sheryl Calderon, all recipients of the Charles S. Ensley Scholarship. The article, entitled Local 371 celebrates 1965 welfare strikers, honors Ensley, recognizes the award recipients and describes the important role Charles Ensley played in the labor movement:
The impact of this victorious 28-day strike was far reaching: It set the stage for the massive growth of the public sector unions, especially DC 37’s parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and it reformed labor-city relations, establishing the framework for creating what later became the Office of Collective Bargaining.
Basil Smikle Jr. has been an Adjunct Professor at the Murphy Institute for over six years, teaching classes under the umbrella of Urban Studies in the Public Administration Certificate in Policy Analysis and Government, Politics and the Policy-Making Process.
This weekend, he appeared on MSNBC to discuss the Democratic party and the 2016 Presidential Election.
This week, the NYTimes ran a story by Rachel L. Swarns showing the stark differences in labor conditions for unionized vs non-unionized retail workers. In an article that will come as no surprise to those who have been following labor struggles among retail workers, Swarns writes about the relatively stable labor conditions for workers at Macy’s in New York City’s Harold Square, explaining:
…these union workers savor something that is all too rare in the retail industry right now: guaranteed minimum hours — for part-time and full-time employees — and predictable schedules.
Unfortunately, as an upcoming report by Murphy Professor Stephanie Luce and the Retail Action Project shows, these benefits are accruing to only a fraction of the retail industry as a whole. Swarns writes that the researchers, “surveyed 236 retail workers in Manhattan and Brooklyn and found that only 40 percent had set minimum hours per week.”
For more on the state of unions and retail workers, and a look at some of the changes the retail industry is undergoing, read the full story.
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