This week’s #ThrowbackThursday focuses on worker organizing. Featuring a post from 2022 with predictions for worker organizing in 2023, a post explaining the organizing wave in academia, and a blogcast featuring Cathy Nolan and Jessica Garcia speaking on farmworker organizing rights in New York, this edition explores a few current worker organizing movements.
Will 2023 Lock in 2022’s Worker Organizing Successes? (posted December 27, 2022)
2022 was quite a year for worker organizing. The names alone tell the story: Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, Apple retail stores, Ultium Cells, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, New York Times, Art Institute (and School) of Chicago, University of Washington, and many, many others. During the first three quarters of 2022, private-sector workers filed 58% more petitions for union representation elections with the National Labor Relations Board than they had during the same period in 2021. Read Seth Harris’s four factors he said will determine the path forward for 2023, and see if they came true.
Five Reasons A Worker Organizing Wave is Washing Over Academia (posted February 20, 2023)
Higher education is fertile ground for union organizing. From undergraduate student employees at Dartmouth College, the University of Oregon and several smaller private colleges to adjunct faculty in Washington, DC-area colleges and universities to graduate student workers at far too many research universities to list here, a worker organizing wave is washing over colleges and universities. Graduate student employees of Northeastern University— this blog’s home institution— contributed to the wave when they filed a petition with the NLRB this year seeking an election that could allow the UAW to represent them. This post examines why this wave developed.
Power At Work Blogcast #10: Farmworker Organizing Rights in New York State (posted June 27, 2023)
Watch Burnes Center Senior Fellow Seth Harris in conversation with Cathy Nolan, former New York State Assemblywoman and Assembly Labor Committee Chair, and Jessica García, Assistant to the President of the Retail, Wholesale Department Store Union (RWDSU), as they discuss farm workers' right to organize, the barriers and triumphs of organizing under the 2019 New York Farm Workers Bill, the fight to get it passed, and much more.