The time for you to exercise your voice and your vote has almost come. But first, you will need to listen to some great labor songs and, maybe, sing along.
Power At Work is proud and excited to announce the nominees for #2025Labor Grammy awards.
Introducing The Guthries
Beginning January 6, 2025, you will have a chance to vote for your favorite nominated song in the five categories listed below and one special category. It’s all for fun and to lift up great songs about worker power, unions, and worker collective action. Your collective choices will win the vaunted “Guthrie Award,” which honors labor music pioneer Woody Guthrie.
We could not know this would happen when naming the award, but Woody Guthrie won the most recognition from the #2025LaborGrammys Nominating Committee with four nominations. Tom Morello was close behind with three nominations.
Of course, we made up the Guthries just like we made up the Labor Grammys. The awards are virtual, but the Power At Work community’s warm gratitude for the artists who wrote, performed, and produced the songs is very real. Maybe you can help these artists sell some downloads or albums by getting more people involved in the Labor Grammys voting.
The Labor Grammys Process
Here’s how you will choose the winners of this year’s Labor Grammys:
Step #1: Listen to the nominated songs. We have created a Spotify playlist of all the nominated songs to make it easier for you to listen to them. Below we will tell you who served on the Nominating Committee that chose the nominated songs (spoiler alert: you will be impressed). The Labor Grammys Nominating Committee made its selections from a long list curated by Zeno Minotti and the Power At Work team consistent with the rules described in Power At Work’s first #2025LaborGrammys post.
Step #2: If you are not already subscribed to Power At Work, go to the front page of the web site and subscribe right now. Why subscribe? Only Power At Work subscribers are permitted to vote for the winners of the #2025LaborGrammys. Of course, there are lots of other benefits to subscribing. We will tell you about them another time.
Step #3: Join the debate over the songs that should win the Labor Grammys. Post to Bluesky, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok to advocate for the nominated songs you love the most. Don’t forget to use #2025LaborGrammys and tag Power At Work using our correct handle for each social media site --- just search Power At Work to find us.
Step #4: When the voting opens on January 6, cast your vote for your favorite nominee in each category. We will send voting instructions to Power At Work subscribers just before the voting opens. Voting will close on January 17. Of course, it’s perfectly okay to organize your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, and union siblings to vote for your favorites, as long as they cast their votes between January 6 and January 17. Make sure they subscribe to Power At Work so we can send them the voting instructions, as well.
Step #5: Watch the Power At Work #2025LaborGrammys awards ceremony blogcast in February and read the Power At Work post announcing the #2025LaborGrammys winners when we publish it. Again, the best way to keep track of all Labor Grammys content is to subscribe to Power At Work.
So, listen to the nominated songs and cast your votes as soon as voting begins on January 6. We will count the votes after January 17. Don’t miss the opportunity to have your voice heard!
The Labor Grammys Nominees
When the voting begins, you will vote for one nominated song in each of five categories and one special category --- so go to the Spotify playlist and listen to them right now! Here are the nominees in each category with the artists who performed the song:
Best Traditional Worker Power Song
(the traditional canon of labor protest, organizing, and victory songs)
Best Folk Worker Power Song
Note: The Nominating Committee’s votes produced a tie between the fifth and sixth songs, so Power At Work included six songs in this category
Best Rock Worker Power Song
Best Punk Worker Power Song
Best Pop Worker Power Song
In addition, we consider it important to pay special tribute to the labor anthem “Solidarity Forever,” so we gave it a category all its own. Please vote for one version of “Solidarity Forever” from among these five nominated versions.
Best Version of “Solidarity Forever”
The Labor Grammys Nominating Committee
Who chose these Labor Grammys nominees? Power At Work sought to recruit a diverse, knowledgeable, and labor-friendly Nominating Committee to choose the five (or six, in one category) nominated songs in each of these categories from a much longer list. We wanted trade unionists, labor culture experts, labor lawyers and scholars, musicians, music critics, and music scholars. Fortunately, Power At Work’s friends are amazingly generous with their time, endlessly curious, and perpetually eager to have a good time. So, we succeeded in attracting a stellar group to serve on the Labor Grammys Nominating Committee:
Laureve Blackstone represents individuals, unions, and benefit and pension funds in all aspects of labor and employment law, including employee benefits law. She represents unions in negotiations, before administrative agencies, and in state and federal court litigation. A major focus of her practice is representing the Home Care Division of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East in negotiations, new organizing, and in litigation.
Kevin Brousseau is the Secretary-Treasurer of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, serving as the federation’s Chief Financial Officer. Kevin previously served as the Massachusetts AFL-CIO’s political director and a member of OPEIU Local 6.
Joe DeManuelle-Hall is a staff writer and organizer at Labor Notes. He is also a member of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America.
Ruben J. Garcia is Professor of Law and Director of the Workplace Law Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law. Before beginning his teaching career in 2000, Ruben worked at Rothner, Segall and Greenstone as an attorney for public and private sector labor unions and employees in the Los Angeles area.
Chris Garlock is the host and producer of Labor Heritage Power Hour and Labor History Today. He is also the executive director of the Labor Heritage Foundation and the director of the DC Labor FilmFest. He is the founder and co-coordinator of the Labor Radio Podcast Network of which Power At Work is a proud member.
James Gutierrez is an Assistant Teaching Professor and Coordinator of First-Year Experience in the Department of Music in Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media, and Design. He is an interdisciplinary educator, researcher, and musician whose overarching mission is to investigate and realize the potential of music-making as a force for social change, community building, and personal wellbeing, with a particular interest in the more hidden outcomes of musical engagement.
Francesca Inglese is Assistant Professor of Music, and an Affiliate Professor of Cultures, Societies, and Global Studies, as well as a Coordinator of Ethnomusicology at Northeastern University. She is an ethnographer, historian, musician, and teacher. She is also affiliated with the Africana Studies Program. Her research focuses on music and race, sound and urban spatial politics, listening as a critical cultural practice, American and African Diasporic music and dance, and the social life of musical instruments.
Jeannette D. Jones teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the greater Boston area, including at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on cultural and social networks in late fifteenth-century France. She is active in the fields of early music, disability studies, digital humanities, and the environment.
Jocelyn B. Jones advises public and private sector unions and individual employees as both a litigator and a former policymaker. Jocelyn’s practice includes collective bargaining, arbitrations, administrative proceedings, court litigation, private enforcement of the wage and hour laws, and government relations. She provides strategic counsel to labor organizations on public policy, including licensing, regulatory enforcement, bid protests, and legislative advocacy on the federal, state, and municipal levels.
Kim Kelly is a labor reporter for In These Times magazine and has been a regular labor columnist for Teen Vogue since 2018. Her writing on labor, class, politics, disability, and culture has appeared in The Nation, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Baffler, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and many others. Kelly has also worked as a video correspondent for More Perfect Union, The Real News Network, and Means TV. Previously, she was the heavy metal editor at Noisey, Vice’s music vertical, and helped organize the Vice union. A third-generation union member, she served three terms as an elected councilperson for the Writers Guild of America, East Council. Her first book, Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, was published in 2022.
Karl Klare is a George J. and Kathleen Waters Matthews Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law at Northeastern University. He focuses on labor and employment law, human rights and legal theory, fields in which he has written and lectured extensively. He is considered a leading voice in the field of critical legal studies. In recent years, he has worked on numerous projects with lawyers in South Africa.
Doug Klein is the drummer for Neon Avenue, a Grateful Dead tribute band. The band brings a fresh take on the Grateful music that you know and love while placing an emphasis on improvisation, unique setlist construction, deeper cuts into the grateful songbook and a primal energy that they draw from their loyal fans during live performances.
Kimberly Lucas is an academic-practitioner at Northeastern University’s College of Social Sciences and Humanities who is committed to community-driven civic research, innovation in city-university collaborations, and leveraging our collective expertise for the social good. Kim previously served as Interim Executive Director at Metrolab Network and Director of Civic Research for the City of Boston.
Andrew Mall is an associate professor in Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media, and Design. He teaches ethnomusicology, music industry, and popular music courses. His research and teaching interests include, among other topics, mainstream and underground musics; ethnographic research methods; DIY music scenes, resilience, and public health; histories of music industries; music festivals; nostalgia, collecting, and consumption; and the political economies of Christian music.
Rachel Rosenbloom teaches and writes about immigration law and policy at Northeastern University. She also serves as associate dean for experiential education. Her recent scholarship has focused on the intersection of criminal law and immigration law, the possibilities and limits of transnational legal advocacy in advancing the rights of deportees, and the role of race and immigration in the historical development of US citizenship law.
Rachael Running is the communications organizer at the Greater Boston Labor Council. Rachael came to the Greater Boston Labor Council in early 2020 after serving 5 years as Communications Coordinator with the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. Rachael brings two decades of experience in policy, research and communications in community and labor organizations, including 9 years at United for a New Economy in Denver.
Joe Slater is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Toledo and Eugene N. Balk Professor of Law and Values and a member of the Federal Labor Relations Authority’s Federal Services Impasse Panel. Before joining the faculty, he practiced in Washington, D.C. for over a decade, including representing unions and individual employees. Joe is also a guitarist, singer, and band member.
Thank you to every member of the Nominating Committee for their excellent work. And thanks to you for the votes you are going to cast to help Power At Work choose the winners of #2025LaborGrammys!
