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Events, Home

Event: Promising Practices: Labor and Community Fighting Sexual Harassment in the Era of #MeToo (3/23)

Friday, March 23rd, 2018, 9am
The Murphy Institute
25 W 43rd Street, 18th Floor
New York, NY, 10036 

RSVP HERE

Friday, March 23, 9am-12:30pm
Co-sponsored by the Murphy Institute, CUNY and The Worker Institute at Cornell ILR

An interactive program bringing strategies, resources, and creativity together to create an equity framework for fighting harassment in the workplace and community.

9:00-9:15 am – Welcome and Intro Exercise

  • KC Wagner, The Worker Institute, Cornell ILR, NYC
  • Jenny DeBower, Center for Anti-Violence Education – Finding and Raising your Voice!

9:15-9:30 am – Cultural, Legal & Legislative Landscapes

  • Maya Raghu, National Women’s Law Center

9:30-9:40 am – Participant Witness and Share

9:40-10:40 am Panel – Promising Practices

  • Unions and Legislative Strategies – Sarah Lyons and Roushaunda Williams, UNITE HERE Local 1, Chicago
  • Community and Union Engagement – Quentin Walcott, CONNECT
  • Leveraging Worker Voice – Catherine Barnett, ROCU and One Fair Wage
  • Catalysts for Change – Ana Avendaño, The United Way World Wide

10:40-10:50 am – Participant Pair Dialouge

10:50-11:20 am – Q & A with Panel

1:00-3:00pm– Break Out Sessions (These are concurrent sessions. See registration to join one; RSVP is needed in addition to the main program)

  • Break Out A: Upstander Training: Upstander workshops are designed to equip those facing hate and violence with de-escalation skills and basic self-defense techniques. Additionally, this training empowers bystanders with the tools they need to help those facing harassment by choosing intentionally from a continuum of tactics. These two approaches combined offer New Yorkers unique and critical options for keeping our communities as safe as possible and mitigating violence. Led by The Center for Anti-Violence Education
  • Break Out B: Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: This presentation gives a general overview of discrimination in employment and then addresses the topic of sexual harassment in the workplace. The presentation coverers the form, impact and components of sexual harassment; liability; what can a victim or witness of sexual harassment do. In addition, case scenarios are presented for group discussion. Lastly, penalties, remedies and the Commission’s complaint process are explained. Led by NYC Commission on Human Rights
Films, Special Events

Workers Unite! Film Festival 2014

NYC Celebrates Global Labor Solidarity
MAY 9TH TO MAY 19TH, 2014

The Workers Unite! Film Festival aims to showcase student and professional films from the United States and around the world which publicize and highlight the struggles, successes and daily lives of all workers in their efforts to unite and organize for better living conditions and social justice.

This year we honor the Joseph Murphy Institute for Workers Education and Labor Studies, based at The City University of NY.

FRIDAY, MAY 9th OPENING NIGHT –Cinema Village theater one
Salute to the Next Generation of Labor leaders and Socially Conscious Filmmakers
@22 E 12th St, New York, NY 10003, (212) 924-3363

Continue reading Workers Unite! Film Festival 2014 →

Home, Labor Studies, New Labor Forum

Faculty of the World, Unite?

Penny Lewis is an Assistant Professor of Labor Studies at The Murphy Institute

Years of organizing, agitating, occupying and strategizing have brought the issue of low wage and precarious work to the forefront of contemporary economic discussion.  Fast food and retail are not the only sectors where such low wage work has become the norm:  higher education is increasingly structured along the same logic.  One of the central slogans taken up by students and professors at today’s May Day march and rally is “May Day $5K” – a call for a minimum payment of $5,000 per college class taught by part-time and contingent faculty.  This demand is being made alongside calls for job security, health benefits, and other improved working conditions for the contingent instructional staff that now comprises 75 percent of all college faculty members.  Shamefully, CUNY pays adjuncts closer to $3,000 per class, and it’s not an outlier.

Continue reading Faculty of the World, Unite? →

Home, Labor Studies

Why We Celebrate May Day as a Workers’ Holiday

By Steve Brier

One of the great ironies is that workers all over the world celebrate Labor Day on May 1st, not the first Monday in September, the way we do in the U.S. Most people assume the choice of May 1st has something to do with the former Soviet Union. They don’t realize that the idea to celebrate May Day, International Workers’ Day, in fact traces its roots all the way back to Chicago in 1886. This was a period of enormous U.S. economic growth, with millions of immigrant workers from Europe, Mexico, and China pouring into the cities and countryside to work in the mills, factories, fields, and mines. Working conditions and wages were deplorable; workers sometimes toiled 12, 14 or even 16 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week for meager wages.

Continue reading Why We Celebrate May Day as a Workers’ Holiday →