Home, Labor Studies

The Future of Labor Organizing: There’s an App for That?

In a new report on virtual labor organizing by Mark Zuckerman, Richard D. Kahlenberg, and Moshe Z. Marvit,  the authors suggest that the labor movement could grow through use of online organizing tools, and the NLRB would support such innovations. The report has implications for popular organizing models unions use now, which often involve developing or bringing in teams of organizers for face-to-face conversations. Could online tools augment that work? Replace it?

From the report, Virtual Labor Organizing: Could Technology Help Reduce Income Inequality?:

In an era of persistent income inequality, virtual organizing may provide an opportunity to lift the lifetime earnings of hardworking Americans.

The creation of [a] platform, in and of itself, could give employees surprising new leverage at work, once the company understands that dissatisfied employees have an easier, less-obstructed way to join a union.

If virtual organizing took hold, it also could transform the way in which the nation’s top labor unions deploy their organizing capabilities. Rather than just engaging in resource-intensive retail organizing, they could become wholesalers of union formation, investing in large-scale promotion of an online resource, backed by call-centers and a significant network architecture standing behind this powerful new tool.

The American worker certainly needs help to reclaim the benefits of the legal right to organize. Wages and salaries—once over 50 percent of GDP have now slid to 42.6 percent, the lowest since 1929. This disastrous decline in prosperity needs to be disrupted. Recent economic, political, and legal trends—as well as the surging use of technology—may provide workers a way forward through virtual labor organizing.

The full report is available here.

What do you think? How could a new virtual platform change the face of labor organizing?

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Uberization and Its Discontents: The On-Demand Economy and the Future of Full-time Work

By Eric Levitz

Even at dinner, Rich Armstead stays on Task. An hour ago, the 32-year-old comedian finished assembling an IKEA bed for a woman in Brooklyn Heights. When he’s done with his cheeseburger, he’ll follow the waitress back into the kitchen of this Chelsea pub, and fix the sink’s leaking drainpipe.

“It’s a hustle, for sure,” he says, scanning his smartphone for future gigs.

Armstead is one of over 30,000 workers who sell their labor via TaskRabbit, an online marketplace where consumers can find a “Tasker” for any small job, from waiting in line to wedding photography. The platform is itself just one of a growing number of all-purpose service apps, including Handy, Fiverr, and Needto, which together make up only one sector of the ever-expanding “on-demand economy.” Continue reading Uberization and Its Discontents: The On-Demand Economy and the Future of Full-time Work →

Home, Labor Studies, Murphy News

Ruth Milkman in the New York Times: Gawker, Millennials, and the Future of Labor

In “Millennials May Turn the Tide Toward Unionization,” featured in yesterday’s New York Times, Murphy Professor Ruth Milkman offers tempered optimism about Gawker Media staffers’ recent unionization and the potential for new labor organizing campaigns:

“…in the “new economy,” young workers are less likely to be unionized than their older counterparts. But that doesn’t seem to reflect workers’ own preferences. In fact recent surveys show that millennials — the dominant demographic at Gawker and other digital media companies — are far more often pro-union than their baby boomer counterparts.”

She continues,

“To make a real difference in today’s economy, unions need to meet the needs of young, college-educated workers like those at Gawker as well as workers struggling at the bottom of the labor market, in industries like fast-food and retail. As inequality between the haves and have-nots continues to widen, organized labor is the one surviving institution that systematically pushes in the other direction.”

For the full column, visit the New York Times.

Home, Murphy News

Murphy Scholarship Event: Diversity and Labor

On Wednesday, June 3rd, 2015, the Murphy Institute hosted the third annual Joseph S. Murphy Scholarship for Diversity in Labor reception and awards ceremony. The reception, which began with remarks from CUNY Chancellor James B. Milliken and Murphy Director Greg Mantsios, was followed by a formal program featuring three rising leaders in the labor movement: Shaun Francois, President, Local 372, DC 37 AFSCME, Dolly Martinez of the Retail Action Project, and Jonathan Westin of New York Communities for change.

Six students were then awarded full scholarships to attend Murphy programs: Adriane Hudson, Jack Suria Linares, Onieka O’Kieffe, Stacey Payton, Andrea Pluas and Nadya Stevens.

The program ended with a tribute to Arthur Cheliotes, the President of Local 1180, Communication Workers of America, who was presented with the Joseph S. Murphy Lifetime Achievement Award for his significant contributions to the Murphy Institute and to the workers of New York.

Congratulations to all the award recipients and to the growing Murphy community!

Home, Labor Studies, New Labor Forum

Labor, Accountability and Safety in the Global Era

By Karen Judd

At Thursday’s breakfast forum, Decent Wages and Accountability to Workers in the Garment Global Supply Chain, former New York Times Labor Journalist Steven Greenhouse, whose coverage of the Rana Plaza disaster put global sweatshops again on the front page, said: “Overseas sweatshops are the logical result of globalization and the race to the bottom.” He noted that it is shocking that, 114 years after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, workers – predominantly women — are working in the same incredibly bad conditions, with no fire escapes or sprinklers, with infrequent inspections and with absolutely no voice for workers, concluding: “Things will not improve unless there is greater pressure from consumers and the media.”

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRWhuYVlqS0&feature=youtu.be] Continue reading Labor, Accountability and Safety in the Global Era →

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