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New Labor Forum Highlights: March 21, 2016

The New Labor Forum has launched a bi-weekly newsletter on current topics in labor, curated by the some of the most insightful scholars and activists in the labor world today. Check out some highlights from the latest edition below.

New Labor Forum Highlights: Mar. 21, 2016 

This newsletter focuses on labor and digital organizing. Kati Sipp, in her forthcoming article in the May issue of New Labor Forum, asks: How long will it take for labor to catch up to the corporate and political tech sectors in the use of digital tools? Why is it taking so long? And what are the enormous missed opportunities? It’s a timely look at an issue that’s become pressing for large categories of workers, such as Uber and those in the gig economy. It’s also a fitting accompaniment to the report “Virtual Labor Organizing: Could Technology Help Reduce Income Inequality?” by Zuckerman, Kahlenberg, and Marvit. While tech can’t solve the political and social contradictions, they argue it can make solutions easier to implement and fight for.

Last but not least – save the date for the next Organizing 2.0, the annual training event for labor and allied movements to improve their use of digital tools and strategies, to be held at the Murphy Institute. Now in its 8th year, this event features fifty distinct workshops covering social media, mobile apps, email list management, small dollar fundraising, online video production, internal organizing and more. Not to be missed.

Contents:

  1. The Internet versus the Labor Movement: Why Unions Are Late-Comers to Digital Organizing/ by Kati Sipp
  2. Register for conference.organizing20.org
  3. Virtual Labor Organizing: Could Technology Help Reduce Income Inequality?/ by Mark Zuckerman, Richard D. Kahlenberg, and Moshe Z. Marvit

Photo by Michael Coghlan via flickr (CC-SA)

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New Labor Forum Highlights: March 7, 2016

The New Labor Forum has launched a bi-weekly newsletter on current topics in labor, curated by the some of the most insightful scholars and activists in the labor world today. Check out some highlights from the latest edition below.

Working-class anxiety and rage – often disguised in the drama that is American electoral politics – have assumed a central role in the current presidential race. It is this distress that has in large part buoyed the Donald, harlequin huckster of the GOP, who upon reviewing the Nevada Caucus results, declared, “I love the poorly educated!”

And in a sign that working-class angst may have emerged from some of its old hiding places, evangelicals have largely abandoned candidates like Ted Cruz, who have built their careers railing against abortion and gay rights, in favor the unabashed playboy exemplar of “New York values.” It is Trump’s energetic anti-free trade, anti-immigrant tirades that so poignantly enact white working-class stress and has brought him to the lead. 

So no surprise then that union members voting in the Republican primaries vote for Trump at significantly higher rates than other GOP voters. This, after roughly two decades of energetic, expensive and, until now, fairly successful efforts on behalf of the AFL-CIO to educate union voters and their families. On one hand, it makes perfect sense; after years of making it clear that corporate friendly free trade deals were harming workers, why wouldn’t Republican union members square the circle by going for Trump?

Please feel free to respond directly on New Labor Forum’s site. We welcome your feedback!

Contents:

  1. The Genie Grown Monstrous: How Donald Trump, the All-American Frankenstein, Devoured the GOP / Steve Fraser Editor – at Large, New labor Forum
  2. Class Will Out by Harold Meyerson, American Prospect

Photo by Gage Skidmore used via Creative Commons from flickr (CC-BY-SA)

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Unions, Workers, and the Democratic Party

Video

The Murphy Institute is known for its public programming, bringing thinkers, leaders and policymakers together to discuss the issues vital to making change in our city and our world. 

This past September at Murphy, Randi Weingarten, President of American Federation of Teachers, and Larry Cohen of Making Progressive Politics Work and the former President of the Communications Workers of America discussed the future of the Democratic Party. Watch part of the conversation below.

Regardless of who becomes the Democratic Party candidate for President in 2016, organized labor is poised once again to spend millions of dollars on the Democratic candidate. What is labor shopping for? What is it likely to get for its political money? How will it determine whether or not its resources were wisely spent? Will the larger, diverse working-class find a distinct voice in a political environment dominated by big money?

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New Labor Forum Highlights: Jan. 21, 2016

The New Labor Forum has launched a bi-weekly newsletter on current topics in labor, curated by the some of the most insightful scholars and activists in the labor world today. Check out some highlights from the latest edition below.

In this issue of Highlights, appearing just after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday, we take up two related issues: the attack on public sector unionism embodied in the Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case, now before the Supreme Court; and the crisis of mass incarceration. Both of these dilemmas profoundly and disproportionately impact African-Americans. Public sector jobs provide decent wages and job security to fully 20 percent of black workers. The potential evisceration of those unions essential to making these good jobs will therefore disproportionately affect African-American workers and their communities. And for over half a century, public sector jobs have served as a bulwark against the ubiquitous job discrimination, unemployment and bad jobs that have contributed to exceedingly high rates of black incarceration. 

Contents:

  1. Labor & the Supreme Court: Recent Cases (Charlotte Garden)
  2. Public Sector Unionism under Assault (Joseph A. McCartin)
  3. It’s Not Just the Drug War /Marie Gottschalk interview in Jacobin
  4. Michael Fortner: Forum on Justice Reform (Video)
  5. Public Sector Unions on the line (Event)
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New Labor Forum Highlights: Jan. 5, 2016

The New Labor Forum has launched a bi-weekly newsletter on current topics in labor, curated by the some of the most insightful scholars and activists in the labor world today. Check out some highlights from the latest edition below.

It’s that time of year again, when we release another issue of New Labor Forum into the world! With the New Year celebrations behind us, we’re pleased to offer a selection of free articles covering the dissolution of the Republican Party, Black Lives Matter, adjunct organizing, the next debt-based financial crisis, and the Next System Project, which aims to refine and publicize alternative political-economic system models capable of delivering more just and sustainable social, economic and ecological outcomes.

Our freely available articles are only a small fraction of what our subscribers enjoy. See the full table of contents on our website, and subscribe to our print and digital editions here.

Contents:

  1. The Fissuring of the Republican Party: A Road Map to Political Chaos / Darren Dochuk
  2. Black Lives Matter: Toward a Modern Practice of Mass Struggle / Russell Rickford
  3. Adjuncts of the World Unite: How Faculty Are Resisting the Corporatization of Higher Education / Malini Cadambi Daniel
  4. The Subprime Specter Returns: High Finance and the Growth of High Risk Consumer Debt / Jennifer Taub
  5. New York Inaugural Teach-In for the Next System Project
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New Labor Forum Highlights: Dec. 21, 2015

The New Labor Forum has launched a bi-weekly newsletter on current topics in labor, curated by the some of the most insightful scholars and activists in the labor world today. Check out some highlights from the latest edition below.

The Paris Agreement: More Than Was Expected, But Still Far Less Than Is Required

World leaders have greeted the Paris Agreement on Climate Change as a ‘giant leap for humanity.’  But unions and their allies are concerned that the commitments made by countries do not add up to 2 degrees, let alone 1.5 degrees.  The ‘intended nationally determined contributions’ (or INDCs) set us on course for more thanlfhighlightsn 3 degrees of warming. In fact, most countries have not proposed any emissions reductions at all, but have instead pledged to reduce emissions based on business as usual ‘trajectories.’ 

Contents:

  1. Video: Naomi Klein and Jeremy Corbyn Speak at December 7th Gathering of Unions and Social Movements
  2. One Million Climate Jobs – A Model for US Labor?
  3. Radicalism Rising and the Limits of the “Inside” Game (Asbjørn Wahl)
  4. Colorado Ballot Initiative for Fair Wages, Environment, & Housing (Sarah Jaffe)
  5. Poem: Juneau Spring By Dorianne Laux
  6. Earth to Labor: Dispatches from the Climate Battleground (Sean Sweeney)

Photo via New Labor Forum