November 2020

  • In “Coalition and Confrontation: A Response to Jared Abbott,” Luke Elliott-Negri pushes back against Abbott’s analysis of Democratic “coalition strategy” and a “confrontation strategy.” Read it here in Organizing Upgrade.
  • Ruth Milkman has published “Old wine in new bottles: gender and the gig economy” about her study (along with Luke Elliott-Negri, Kathleen Griesbach, and Adam Reich) of the platform-based food economy, which had an explosion in demand when COVID-19 hit. She found that the majority of the workers were white women, and describes the “class-gender nexus” of this element of the gig economy. Read about it in WorkinProgress.
  • Stephanie Luce writes about organizing in the labor movement to defend democracy in the event of a contested election. She notes that some unions are trying to connect their core activists with local “protect the vote” groupings in key states and cities to show up to polls and fight to make sure every vote is counted. Read it here in Organizing Upgrade.
  • In this piece from Organizing Work, Marianne Garneau debates with labor organizer and journalist Chris Brooks and veteran union negotiator Joe Burns about Bargaining for the Common Good and its use as a model for connecting workplace fights with broader social demands. Read part one and part two here.
  • In “How Does the Past Look From Here? Notes from a historian” Joshua Freeman compares today’s pandemic and politics to the events preceding and following the flu epidemic of 1918, and argues that this time, the yearning for a return to “normality” may be misplaced. Read it here in Moyers on Democracy.
  • Deepak Bhargava discussed economic, racial and immigrant justice with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal in the latest installment of SLU’s ongoing series “COVID Capitalism. Watch it.

October 2020

September 2020

  • Mimi Abramovitz and Deepak Bhargava on how the pandemic has exposed the systemic failures of America’s inadequate welfare state, in Social Security for All.
  • Ruth Milkman and Stephanie Luce,  The State of the Unions 2020: A Profile of Organized Labor in New York City, New York State, and the US
  • An interview with Mimi Abramovitz  and Jennifer Zelnick  was the lead article in the  9-2-20 issue of the NYN  Media an online newspaper.  The article  The drawbacks of treating social work like a business  is based findings of their research published in the  August 2020 Issue of Social Work.
  •  Jennifer Zelnick and Mimi Abramovitz ( 2020). “The Perils of Privatization: Bringing the Business Model into the Human Services” Social Work. August, 2020

August 2020

  • Kafui Attoh has co-authored “‘Just-in-Place’ labor: Driver organizing in the Uber workplace” in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. In this scholarly paper, Kafui and his co-authors, Katie J. Wells and Declan Cullen, posit that that Uber’s attempts to keep its workers “just-in-place,” which generally isolate and disempower drivers, can actually enable new modes of organization. Read it here.
  • Steve Brier and Michael Fabricant co-authored a piece in the Gothan Gazette entitled “Racialized Austerity: The Case of CUNY” in which they chronicle the steady erosion of public funding for higher education from the New York State and City government, and how it has affected CUNY.
  • Andrew Sparburg, who teaches regularly in SLU’s transit program, wrote about the Queensboro Bridge, which appeared in the daily blog of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society. Read it here.
  • Sean Sweeney has a new piece that is co-published by Jacobin and New Labor Forum, entitled “There May Be No Choice but to Nationalize Oil and Gas — and Renewables, Too.” Read it here.
  • A moving piece from The New Yorker featuring an SLU alum, MTA bus driver Terence Layne, in which he mentions taking Andy Sparberg’s class on the history of transit. Read “A Transit Worker’s Survival Story.”.

July 2020

  • An article in the latest edition of New Labor Forum takes a look inside an Amazon fulfillment center.  Get a firsthand view how workers are handling the pandemic, worker safety and organizing themselves in the demanding environment of a booming business.

  • Stephanie Luce authored two articles: one in LaborNotes on workers and housing, and another in Portside on how unions are organizing for racial justice.

  • Gladys Palma de Shrynemakers is co-hosting Next Gen Assessment: A Series for Educators Transitioning Online for the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU). This is an ongoing series of blog posts complemented by brief video discussions designed to help educators exchange information about assessment challenges and emerging best practices in digital delivery.

  • Newly appointed Assistant Professor of Labor Studies Joel Suarez discusses two recent books about anti-immigrant sentiment in an article entitled “The Nativist Tradition” in Dissent magazine.

  • David Unger has authored a piece on police unions and the Black Lives Matter movement for the fall issue of New Labor Forum, which has been released early due to its timeliness. Read it here.

June 2020

  • Mike Menser, has a piece out in Non-Profit Quarterly on how the call to “defund the police” is not just a call to transform policing and rethink “safety,” but also a call to transform budgeting. Read it here.

Archive

2019