Meeting in a year in which surging corporate power has threatened both unions and democracy as we know it, the 2013 LAWCHA conference in New York City focuses on how varied groups of working people have built the solidarity needed to challenge their employers, each other, their communities, and the state to seek justice and improve their lives. Historically and today women, immigrants and people of color have often been at the forefront of these struggles. Many have seen the revitalization of their organizations—unions, cooperatives, mutual aid societies, and political movements—as critical to their struggles for equality and democracy in and beyond the workplace. In the present moment, faced with obstacles to organizing that evoke earlier centuries, workers and their allies are creating innovative organizational forms and strategies in the U.S. and around the world.
About the Conference
Where
The 2013 LAWCHA Conference will be held in New York City, right in the heart of Lower Manhattan. Conference panels and roundtables will be held at the Graduate Center for Worker Education, on the 7th Floor of 25 Broadway, New York, NY 10004.
Plenaries and other events will be held in venues nearby. For more information, see the Program.
Useful links:
When
The conference will take place from Thursday, June 6th through Saturday the 8th, 2013.
The committee is working closely with the Left Forum in New York, so as to reduce conflicts and allow interested scholars and activists to participate in panels, presentations, and plenaries for both events.
Co-Sponsors
- Brooklyn College Graduate Center for Worker Education, CUNY
- Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, Center for Continuing Education and Workforce Development
- City College of New York, Center for Worker Education, CUNY
- Consortium for Worker Education (Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO)
- Cooper Union Office of Continuing Education & Public Programs
- Empire State, Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies
- Haymarket Books
- The Murphy Institute, School of Professional Studies CUNY
- National Labor College
- New York University Department of History
- Worker Institute, Cornell University ILR School
- Workforce Development Institute
Advertising
The Labor and Working Class Association 2013 Conference Program will provide advertisements for publishers, journals, magazines, and other organizations who wish to market and promote their books to a unique readership of more than 500 readers who will attend the conference in New York from June 6-8, 2013
For more information, see our page dedicated to program announcements for the upcoming LAWCHA conference.
Registration
Online registration ends May 31st. Onsite registration will be available through check only.
| Late Registration | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Registration Type | Regular | Student | Retiree |
| LAWCHA Member | $90 | $50 | $40 |
| Register & Join LAWCHA | $120 | $70 | $70 |
| Regular, Non-Member | $120 | $70 | $70 |
| One-Day Registration (Saturday, June 8) | $35 | $25 | $25 |
| Membership Luncheon | +$25 | +$20 | +$25 |
Guest registration, for non-participating or non-academic partners, spouses, and relatives will be available on-site for $40.
Want to pay by check? Download our registration form and follow its directions.
Registration Wizard
Begin here for all registration types. I am a:
- Current LAWCHA Member
- Non-Member, but I want to join LAWCHA
- Non-Member, and I do not want to join LAWCHA
- I wish to register for the Saturday, June 8 events only
Need help? Visit our Step-by-Step registration instructions for a detailed guide on how to register. Need more than that? Email LAWCHA@duke.edu for questions. If you have issues with PayPal, please contact PayPal’s billing support.
Getting an error? If you are receiving the error “You have already signed up with this account information”, your information is already associated with a PayPal account. You must either use a different credit card or email address in order to register. We apologize for this inconvenience! More information on this PayPal bug.
Forms
Please fill out only one of these forms. If you are unsure of which form you need, see our registration instructions, or email LAWCHA@duke.edu for help.
Accommodations
The three hotels listed below are union hotels, but other accommodations like the YMCA and our various hostels are not. There is a website dedicated especially for searching for union hotels in New York City, however, run by the New York Hotel Workers’ Union.
If you have questions or comments, please contact our accommodations organizer, Chris Michael, at cmichael1@gc.cuny.edu or by phone, 1-646-789-8078.
Suggested Hotels
Best Western Bowery Hanbee
Starting at $219
Website BW-BoweryHanbeeHotel.com
Address 231 Grand Street (1.7 mi)
Phone 212-925-1177
St. Giles Tuscany
Starting at $229
Website StGilesNewYork.com
Address130 East 39th Street (3.7 mi)
Phone 888-406-8588
Chelsea Hostel
Starting at $75
Website ChelseaHostel.com
Address 251 West 20th St (3.5 mi)
Phone 212-647-0010
American Dream Hostel
Starting at $120
Website AmericanDreamHostel.com/
Address 168 East 24th St (5.1 mi)
Phone 646-290-0461
Chelsea Center Hostel
Starting at $35 (dorm) & $100 (2-5 people)
Website ChelseaCenterHostel.com
Address 83 Essex St (2.3 mi)
Phone 646-669-8495
Three East 3rd Dorm
Starting at $260 (for entire week)
Website 3e3dorm.com
Address 3 East 3rd St (2.1 mi)
Phone 212-533-7749
Off Soho Suites
Starting at $299 (for 4 people)
Website OffSoHo.com/
Address 11 Rivington St (1.8 mi)
Phone 800-633-7646
Sutton Residence
Starting at $130
Website SuttonResidence.com
Address Lexington and 47th St (4.1 mi)
Phone 212-838-3852
West Side YMCA
Starting at $90 (single), $105 (double), & $140 (private bath)
Website West Side YMCA
Address 5 West 63rd Street (6 mi)
Phone 212-912-2600
Vanderbilt YMCA
Starting at $90 (single), $105 (double), & $140 (private bath)
Website Vanderbilt YMCA
Address 224 East 47th Street (6 mi)
Phone 212-912-2504
Harlem YMCA
Starting at $67 (single) & $80 (double)
Website Harlem YMCA
Address 180 W 135th Street (11 mi)
Phone 212-912-2100
If you have questions or comments, please contact our accommodations organizer, Chris Michael, at cmichael1@gc.cuny.edu or by phone, 1-646-789-8078.
Conference Program
Below is the tenative schedule for the upcoming LAWCHA conference. Times, locations, and precise panel information is subject to change. Do not plan solely according to the information on this page.
Do we have incorrect information about you? Please let us know so we can correct it as soon as possible by emailing LAWCHA@Duke.edu.
Table of Contents
- Film Screening: The Condition of the Working Class
Wednesday ,June 5 , - Plenary: The Assault on Labor and the Public Sector: Strategies for Resistance in the Post-Election Environment
Thursday ,June 6 , - Film Screening: With a Stroke of the Chaveta & Shift Change
Friday ,June 7 , - Plenary: Looking Forward: New Directions and Strategies for Labor
Saturday ,June 8 , - Tour: Museum of the City of New York: Exhibit on Activist New York
Sunday ,June 9 , - Opening Session
Thursday ,June 6 , - Session 1
Thursday ,June 6 ,- 1.1 A Work and Domination
- 1.2 8th Floor The Untold Story of the UAW-AFL: How workers created a viable union against the odds
- 1.3 8th Floor Precarious Workers in the Arts and Entertainment Industry
- 1.4 7-52 Class on the Periphery: Work and Workers in Colonial Contexts
- 1.5 7-51 The Fight for Social Health - A Working-Class Perspective
- 1.6 7-27 Politics, Unions, and Class Identity: Changing Opinions in the American Heartland
- 1.7 7-22 Racism and Reaction
- 1.8 7-21 Liberal Reform and State Repression in the Urban North
- 1.9 7-19 Transnational Perspectives on Worker Radicalism
- 1.10 7-15 Union Organizing: Tactics and Strategy in the Contemporary Era
- 1.11 7-10 Many Pasts, Many Publics: Labor History in NYC
- Session 2
Thursday ,June 6 ,- 2.1 A Labor, Human Rights and the Media: the ILO Transit Workers Decision
- 2.2 8th Floor Fighting for work: the closure of a factory in Southern France
- 2.3 7-52 'Opportunities for Defiance': Embracing Guerilla History and Moving Beyond Scott Walker's Wisconsin
- 2.4 7-50 The Renaissance of Proletarian Literature
- 2.5 7-22 Toxicity, Exposure, and Blue-Green Alliances in the 1970s and 1980s
- 2.6 7-21 STRIKE!
- 2.7 7-21 Traded Futures, Traded Pasts: 20th Century U.S. Trade Policy and the Working Class
- 2.8 7-19 The Politics of Union Democracy
- 2.9 7-15 Karl Marx, Trade Unionist and Revolutionary
- 2.10 7-10 Organizing Contingent Labor: Lessons from the Past and Struggles of the Future
- Session 3
Friday ,June 7 ,- 3.1 A Excluded Workers: Fighting Precarity
- 3.2 8th Floor Race, Class, and Rights: Worker Education Programs, 1918-1945
- 3.3 7-52 Working-Class Resistance to the Carceral State
- 3.4 7-50 How AIDS Changed Everything
- 3.5 7-27 Labor in Rural Communities: Class, Race, and Gender in Company Towns
- 3.6 7-22 Remaking International Labor Solidarity: Exploring models of Labor internationalism in the US and Canada Today
- 3.7 7-19 Managing Men, Constructing Masculinity, and Reckoning with Violence in the Fordist Workplace
- 3.8 7-15 Campus Labor and the Corporate University: A Roundtable Discussion
- 3.9 7-10 The Challenge of Engaged Scholarship
- Session 4
Friday ,June 7 ,- 4.1 8th Floor Maritime History Panel
- 4.2 8th Floor From Collective to Individual Rights: Lawyers Representing Workers in a Changing Political Economy
- 4.3 8th Floor Workers' Resistance in Spaces of American Empire: Labor Struggles in the U.S., Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines in the Early Twentieth Century
- 4.4 7-52 Excluded and Precarious Workers in the U.S.
- 4.5 7-50 The Golden Age of Proletarian Literature
- 4.6 7-21 New Directions in Anarchist Historiography? Roundtable Discussion of The Haymarket Conspiracy: Transatlantic Anarchist Networks by Timothy Messer-Kruse
- 4.7 7-19 The 'Public' Image: Political Activism and Shifting Definitions of Citizenship in the Twentieth Century
- 4.8 7-15 Domestic Workers and Workers' Control in New York City
- 4.9 7-10 Faculty Responses to University Corporatization: The Potential for Unionization and Collective Action
- Session 5
Friday ,June 7 ,- 5.1 A Paterson Silk Worker Militancy and the Implications of 100 Years of Labor Radicalism
- 5.2 8th Floor Beyond the Shop Floor: Communities on the Move
- 5.3 8th Floor Gaining Pride at Work: Queer Union Experiences
- 5.4 8th Floor Author Meets Critic: Barbara Garson, Down the Up Escalator: How the 99% Live in the Great Recession
- 5.5 7-52 Australia and the USA: Comparative and Transnational Perspectives
- 5.6 7-50 Unmaking the New Deal: Labor, Class Politics, and the Rise of the Postwar Urban Order
- 5.7 7-22 Equal Pay at 50
- 5.8 7-21 In the Belly of the Beast: Organizing Scholars and Activists in North Carolina
- 5.9 7-15 The Need for Cooperative Education
- Session 6
Friday ,June 7 ,- 6.1 A Big Ideas: Re-imagining Labor History
- 6.2 8th Floor Rights and Opportunities: Workers, Employers, and the Politics of Ideas
- 6.3 8th Floor 100 Years in the Making: Rethinking and Remembering the 1913 IWW's Portland Cannery Strike, 1913-1914 Michigan Copper Country Strike, and Italian Hall Tragedy
- 6.4 8th Floor Following the Women: Working Women, the Labor Movement, and Economic Justice
- 6.5 7-52 Occupy Kensington: Community Support for Golden Farm Grocery Workers
- 6.6 7-27 Intimacy, Invisibility, and Class Conflict in Service Workplaces across the Twentieth Century
- 6.7 7-22 Domestic Workers' Organizing in the Americas: the Struggle for Justice beyond Borders
- 6.8 7-21 Corruption, Organized Crime and the Labor Movement in Mid-Twentieth Century U.S.
- 6.9 7-19 The Many Battles of Blair Mountain
- 6.10 7-15 Progressive Intellectuals And Labor's Internal Controversies: Lessons of LAWCHA Member Solidarity and Engagement
- 6.11 7-10 Sex Work and the State: Regulation, Resistance, and Labor in the Americas
- Session 7
Saturday ,June 8 ,- 7.1 A From Sweatshop Floor to the Retail Store: Organizing along the global supply Chain: Warehouse Workers, the Wal-Mart Strike Wave, and new ways to build worker power and challenge the World's largest private-sector employer
- 7.2 8th Floor Working-Class Tenant Struggles in New York City
- 7.3 8th Floor Labor History in Secondary Social Studies: Pushing Back the Corporatized Curriculum A Workshop and Discussion
- 7.4 8th Floor Global Women's Work
- 7.5 7-52 Towards a New Caribbean Labor Front: Lessons of the Past and Future Prospects
- 7.6 7-50 Thinking Critically About Community in the Organization of Women
- 7.7 7-50 Sisterhoods: Solidarity in Working-Class Women's Networks
- 7.8 7-27 U.S. Farm Workers, Agribusiness, and the State
- 7.9 7-21 Historical Perspectives on Health and Safety
- 7.10 7-19 Neoliberalism, Labor and Militarization in Central America: Honduras
- 7.11 7-15 Labor, Working Families, and the Grassroots Fight for Public Education
- Session 8
Saturday ,June 8 ,- 8.1 A Working Class Education and the Attack on Labor Education Centers
- 8.2 8th Floor Workers' Rights
- 8.3 8th Floor Mobilizing Transnational Solidarity
- 8.4 8th Floor Putting Labor History in the Public Schools: A Legislative Approach
- 8.5 8th Floor Memory in Service of Activism: The Triangle Fire Centennial and the Clara Lemlich Awards
- 8.6 8th Floor Organizing Domestic Workers in New York, London, & Los Angeles
- 8.7 7-52 A New Front for Labor: Unionized Worker Cooperatives
- 8.8 7-50 Detroit: I Do Mind Dying
- 8.9 7-22 Forging Working-Class Identities through Workers' Newspapers
- 8.10 7-21 "The Teamsters' War on Poverty": Labor's Version of Civil Rights, Social Rights, and Community Activism
- 8.11 7-19 Organizing Carwash Workers in NYC
- 8.12 7-15 Contingent Academic Labor: Organizing the New Faculty Majority
- 8.13 7-10 The Erosion of Labor Law and Worker Insurgency against Capital’s Offensive
- Session 9
Saturday ,June 8 ,- 9.1 A The Chicago Teachers Union Strike: Social Movement Unionism and the Defense of Public Education
- 9.2 7-52 Feminist Labor Organizing in the 1970s
- 9.3 7-51 "Let's Get to Work": Roundtable on Community, Labor, and City Victories in New Haven
- 9.4 7-50 Comparative Labor History in the 20th Century: States, Unions, Struggles
- 9.5 7-33 Mother Jones Three Ways : A Workshop for Teachers
- 9.6 7-27 Labor and the Arts
- 9.7 7-22 Union Organizing in the Twentieth Century
- 9.8 7-21 The "New" Movements: "We won't pay for your crisis - we are your crisis"
- 9.9 7-19 The Working-Class Presence: Does History Matter to Workers When Workers Matter to History?
- 9.10 7-15 Reclaiming Labor's Lost Legacy: The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
- 9.11 7-10 Building a Living Wage Movement in New York City, 2005 to 2012
Wednesday , June 5 ,
Film Screening: The Condition of the Working Class
Location: CWE Auditorium
- Screener Dan La Botz New Politics
- Michael Wayne Filmmaker
- Deirdre O'Neill Filmmaker
Opening Session
Worker Control and Community Councils in Latin America
Location: CWE Room 7-52
- Chair, Comment Laura Kaplan CUNY Graduate Center
- Gregory Wilpert Venezuelanalysis
- David Barkin Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Xochimilco
- Brendan Martin The Working World/La Base
- Peter Ranis CUNY Graduate Center
Hurricane Sandy Stories: A Workers Perspective
Location: CWE Room 7-15
- Chair, Comment Ed Murphy Workforce Development Institute
- Esther Cohen Unseen America
- Ellen Redmond IBEW
- John Samuelson Transit Workers Union Local 100
Organizing Workers along the Food Chain
Location: CWE Room 7-10
- Daisy Chung Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York
- Michael Velarde Brandworkers Industrial Workers of the World
- Adam Obemauer United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1500
- Diana Robinson Food Chain Workers Alliance
Session 1
Work and Domination
Location: CWE Auditorium
- Gregory Zucker CUNY Graduate Center
- Stanley Aronowitz CUNY Graduate Center
- Joan Greenbaum CUNY Graduate Center
- Michael J. Thompson William Paterson University
Roundtable: The Untold Story of the UAW-AFL: How workers created a viable union against the odds
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Kenneth Germanson Wisconsin Labor History Society
- John Revitte Michigan State University
Roundtable: Precarious Workers in the Arts and Entertainment Industry
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Chair Kathlene McDonald City College of New York, Center for Worker Education
- Lois Gray ILR School, Cornell University
- John Amman IATSE Local 600
- Phillip Denniston Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists
- Maria Figueroa Worker Institute at Cornell University
Class on the Periphery: Work and Workers in Colonial Contexts
Location: CWE Room 7-52
- Chair, Comment Evan M. Daniel Queens College, CUNY
- Neoliberal Conservation and Worker-Peasant Autonomism in Madagascar Genese Marie Sodikoff Rutgers University
- Transnational Anarchism in the Extended Caribbean: Cuba, Florida, Panama, and Puerto Rico in the Early Twentieth Century Kirwin Shaffer Penn State University, Berks College
- Provincializing the Lower East Side: Rethinking the Jewish Labor Movement as an Atlantic Formation Ben Gidley ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford
- The Wage Bill of Whiteness: State Employee Unions and the Cost of the Colonial State in Indochina Paul Sager New York University
Roundtable: The Fight for Social Health - A Working-Class Perspective
Location: CWE Room 7-51
- Susan Rosenthal Physician, Activist, Author
- Gregg Shotwell Retired GM Worker, Activist, and Author
- David Pratt NYCOSH Long Island
Politics, Unions, and Class Identity: Changing Opinions in the American Heartland
Location: CWE Room 7-27
- Chair, Comment Joseph E. Slater University of Toledo College of Law
- Forged in the Fire of Community: The 1974 Hortonville, Wisconsin Teachers' Strike and the Rise of Modern Conservatism Adam Mertz University of Illinois at Chicago
- "Should Teachers be Allowed to Strike?" The Unlikely Role of the Cook County College Teachers Union in Re-making Illinois Public Employee Relations Susan Roth Breitzer Campbell University, Fort Bragg Campus
- Class Identities and Working-Class Conservatism: A Community Study of Unions, Class, and Politics in Waterloo, Iowa in 1968 Jason Whisler University of Iowa
Racism and Reaction
Location: CWE Room 7-22
- Chair, Comment Erik Gellman Roosevelt University
- From the Cooperative Commonwealth to the Invisible Empire: The Farm-Labor Bloc and the Creation of the White Primary in Texas, 1919-1923 Tom Alter University of Illinois at Chicago
- Aspects of Re-proletarianization: The South Boston Busing Crisis Evan Sarmiento University of Massachusetts, Boston
- White, American, Non-Union: Making Sense of Missouri's Notorious Strikebreaking Miners Jarod Roll Jarod Roll
Liberal Reform and State Repression in the Urban North
Location: CWE Room 7-21
- Comment Rebecca Hill Kennesaw State University
- Chair, Comment Mark Lause University of Cincinnati
- Organized Employers, Urban Reformers, and the Politics of Law and Order in Progressive Era Cleveland Chad E. Pearson Collin College
- The Illusion of Reform: Carter Harrison, the Working Class, and the Development of the Chicago Police Department Sam Mitrani College of DuPage
- 'Working with the police, you can fight gang crime': Fred Rice, Jr., Chicago Police Torture, and the failures of progressive city government in the 1980s Toussaint Losier University of Chicago
Workshop: Transnational Perspectives on Worker Radicalism
Location: CWE Room 7-19
- The 'Lost Worlds' of Ethnic Radicalism in a Transnational Perspective Kostis Karpozilos Columbia Global Center/Europe
Marcella Benivenni Hostos Community College, CUNY - Class Heterogeneity and Class Unity: The Communist Party of Canada and the Unemployed Movement in Montreal's Great Depression (1930-1935) Benoit Marsan University of Sherbrooke
Union Organizing: Tactics and Strategy in the Contemporary Era
Location: CWE Room 7-15
- Chair, Comment Nancy MacLean Duke University
- The Long History of Casino Capitalism and the Struggle to Organize Service Workers in the Gaming Industry Jocelyn Wills Brooklyn College
- The De-Democratization of Workplace Governance: The Crisis of the Right to Strike Chris Rhomberg Fordham University
Roundtable: Many Pasts, Many Publics: Labor History in NYC
Location: CWE Room 7-10
- Chair Pennee Bender American Social History Project
- Rachel Bernstein LaborArts
- Sarah Henry Museum of the City of New York
- Steve Levine LaGuardia and Wagner Archives
- Annie Polland The Tenement Museum
- Donna Thompson Ray American Social History Project
Session 2
Labor, Human Rights and the Media: the ILO Transit Workers Decision
Location: CWE Auditorium
- Frank Deale CUNY Law School
- Dean Hubbard National Lawyers Guild
- Jeanne Mirer International Commission for Labor Rights
- Dominick Tuminaro Brooklyn College/CUNY
- Nick Unger Avondale Shipyard Research Project
Fighting for work: the closure of a factory in Southern France
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Chair, Comment Chris Rhomberg Fordham University
- Gendered solidarity, gendered divisions in workers mobilisation Alexandra Oeser Université Paris X
- Catholics in struggle, Catholics in trouble? Audrey Rouger Université Aix en Provence
- The Connect Workers and the Media Olivier Baisnée Institut for Political Science in Toulouse
- Transforming Profane Resources into Politics Eric Darras Institut for Political Science in Toulouse
Roundtable: 'Opportunities for Defiance': Embracing Guerilla History and Moving Beyond Scott Walker's Wisconsin
Location: CWE Room 7-52
- Chair, Comment Beth Robinson University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
- Dawson Barrett University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
- Jacob Glicklich University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
- Joe Walzer University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
- John Terry University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
The Renaissance of Proletarian Literature
Location: CWE Room 7-50
- Chair, Discussant Tim Sheard National Writers Union/UAW
- Post-Fordist Proletarianism Joseph Entin Brooklyn College, CUNY
- The "Savage Slot" of Proletarian Writing Larry Hanley San Francisco State University
- Kindred Voices: The Workers Writing Project Marshall Goldberg University of Massachusetts Labor Education Program
- Labor Writes Sharon Syzmanski SUNY Empire State College
Toxicity, Exposure, and Blue-Green Alliances in the 1970s and 1980s
Location: CWE Room 7-22
- Chair, Comment Christopher Sellers SUNY--Stony Brook
- Herbicide Exposure and the Creation of Working-Class Consciousness in Countercultural Reforestation Cooperatives, 1970-1985 Erik Loomis University of Rhode Island
- Occupational Health, Neighborhood Toxicity, and Environmental Justice: The Case of Love Canal Jennifer Thomson Harvard University
- "We're all going to be suffering from the same thing": Labor, Environmental Politics and the Detroit Incinerator, 1986-1991 Josiah Rector Wayne State University
STRIKE!
Location: CWE Room 7-21
- Chair, Discussant Brian Kelly Queens University, Belfast
- Cultivating an Iron Discipline: Authority and Resistance in the Vítkovice General Strike of 1906 John Robertson University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- From Illegal Strike to Mass Movement in Canada, 1917-1919: The Historical Place of Workers' Power Mikhail Bjorge Queens University at Kingston
- Erin's Hope: Revolutionary Unionism and the Soviet Movement in the Irish Troubles, 1913-23 Martin Comack Independent Scholar
Traded Futures, Traded Pasts: 20th Century U.S. Trade Policy and the Working Class
Location: CWE Room 7-21
- Chair, Comment Judith Stein CUNY Graduate Center
- The Cannon Mills Case: Out of the Southern Frying Pan, into the Global Fire (1974-1985) Lane Windham University of Maryland
- Lawrence, Massachusetts, and the Trade Liberalization Protest of 1938 James Benton Georgetown University
- Going Beyond Protection: Making Workers Matter in Sierra Club Trade Policy, 1973-1994 Paul Gibson University of Maryland
The Politics of Union Democracy
Location: CWE Room 7-19
- Chair, Discussant Tera Hunter Princeton University
- The Making and Reception of When Labor Votes: The UAW's First Poll and the Limits of Social Scientific Authority Matt Mettler Towson University
- Organizing the US South Michael Goldfield Wayne State University
Karl Marx, Trade Unionist and Revolutionary
Location: CWE Room 7-15
- Chair, Comment Michael Hirsch New Politics
- Dan La Botz New Politics
- Kate D. Griffiths-Dingani CUNY Graduate Center
- Charles Post BMCC, City University of New York
- Tim Schermerhorn Transit Workers Union Local 100
Roundtable: Organizing Contingent Labor: Lessons from the Past and Struggles of the Future
Location: CWE Room 7-10
- Chair Daniel Katz AFL-CIO National Labor College
- Ileen A. DeVault ILR School, Cornell University
- Jeff Grabelsky ILR School, Cornell University
- Dorothy Sue Cobble Rutgers University
- Saket Soni National Guest Workers Alliance, New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice
Thursday , June 6 ,
Plenary: The Assault on Labor and the Public Sector: Strategies for Resistance in the Post-Election Environment
Location: Eisner-Lubin Auditorium, New York University
- Chair, Opening Remarks Alice Kessler Harris R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History, Columbia University; author, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America.
- Frances Fox Piven Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Political Science, City University of New York, Graduate Center, author, Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America.
- Richard Wolff Professor, University of Massachusetts and New School University; author, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism; and partner democracyatwork.info.
- Bill Fletcher, Jr. Labor Activist, Senior Scholar, Institute for Policy Studies; author, "They're Bankrupting Us" - And Twenty Other Myths about Unions.
- Saket Soni Executive Director, National Guestworker Alliance and New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice; author, And Injustice for all: Workers' Lives in the Reconstruction of New Orleans.
The panel participants will assess the prospects for the US and international labor movements at a time of expanding global corporate economic power and political and economic retrenchment of the organized labor movement in the U.S. How will elections that produced divided federal governance and emboldened conservative governments in many states influence labor\'s prospects? Can labor unions rely on parliamentary and legislative strategies to reverse their decline? What potential do new forms of struggle and worker organization hold for labor? What history and traditions are relevant to the present circumstances? What is the future of strikes and other forms of worker insurgency?
Session 3
Excluded Workers: Fighting Precarity
Location: CWE Auditorium
- Chair Gregor Gall University of Hertfordshire
- More Than Elder Companions: Home Care and Domestic Workers Eileen Boris University of California, Santa Barbara
Jennifer Klein Yale University - Day Workers: Possibilities for Collective Resistance Gretchen Purser Maxwell School, Syracuse University
- Deportation by Design Cindy Hahamovitch The College of William and Mary
- Beyond Exclusion: The Evolution of the Excluded Workers Congress Harmony Goldberg CUNY Graduate Center
Race, Class, and Rights: Worker Education Programs, 1918-1945
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Chair, Discussant Jon Bloom Workers Defense League
- African American Mill Workers and Industrial Democracy, 1918-1929 Kathryn M. Silva Andrews University
- Stetson Kennedy and the CIO-PAC: The Union Card and the Ballot as Weapons in the 1944 Election Diana Eidson Georgia State University
- Defense Worker Training and the Reproduction of Labor Power in Houston, 1940-45 Bryant Etheridge Harvard University
Working-Class Resistance to the Carceral State
Location: CWE Room 7-52
- Chair, Comment Heather Thompson Temple University
- Links and Chains: Feminism, Black Power, and the 1975 Uprising at the Raleigh Women's Prison Amanda Hughett Duke University
- Sabotage: Gender, Race, and Resistance on the Chain Gang Sarah Haley University of California, Los Angeles
- Working Class Composition and De-Composition in the 1970s: Full Employment, the Carceral State, and the Politics of Federal Budgeting David Stein University of Southern California
Roundtable: How AIDS Changed Everything
Location: CWE Room 7-50
- Aids Clincs Organize: The Fight Within the Fight Miriam Frank New York University
- United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (2012 film) Jim Hubbard Film Director
- Union and Division at the Northwest Aids Foundation Christa Orth Historian, Writer
Labor in Rural Communities: Class, Race, and Gender in Company Towns
Location: CWE Room 7-27
- Chair Susan Levine University of Illinois at Chicago
- Labor Rights and Freedom Struggles: African Americans in the Illinois Mine Wars, 1897-1904 Rosemary Feurer Northern Illinois University
- The Geography of Union Avoidance: Rural Industrial Development in North Carolina in the 1950s Tyler G. Greene Temple University
- Rural Identity, Gender, and Class Consciousness at the Amana Refrigeration Company in Rural Iowa, 1950-1970 Coreen Derifield Purdue University
Remaking International Labor Solidarity: Exploring models of Labor internationalism in the US and Canada Today
Location: CWE Room 7-22
- Chair, Comment Kim Scipes Purdue University, North Central
- Organizing labour solidarity against Apartheid in Canada: Comparing the work against South African and Israeli Apartheid Kartherine Nastovski York University, Toronto
- US Labor Against the War: Organizing rank and file solidarity against the war in Iraq Michael Zweig State University of New York, Stony Brook
- Hardhats, Hippies and Hawks: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory Penny Lewis Murphy Institute, City University of New York
Managing Men, Constructing Masculinity, and Reckoning with Violence in the Fordist Workplace
Location: CWE Room 7-19
- Chair, Discussant Ava Baron Rider University
- Killing Floor: Responses to Violence at Detroit and Windsor Auto Plants in the 1970s Jeremy Milloy Simon Fraser University
- Making Canada's Organization Men in the Post-War Years: Shaping Identity and Imposing Control Jason Russel Empire State College, SUNY
- Just Horseplay? Defining Masculinity in Grievance Arbitration during the Fordist Accord, 1948-1970s Joan Sangster Trent University
Roundtable: Campus Labor and the Corporate University: A Roundtable Discussion
Location: CWE Room 7-15
- Clarence Lang University of Kansas
- James R. Barrett University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
- Kyle Schafer UNITE HERE
- Naomi Williams University of Wisconsin, Madison
Roundtable: The Challenge of Engaged Scholarship
Location: CWE Room 7-10
- John W. McKerly University of Iowa
- Susan Roth Breitzer Campbell University, Fort Bragg
- Kerry Taylor Massey University, New Zealand
- Eric Fure-Slocum St. Olaf College
- Michael Innis-Jimenez University of Alabama
Session 4
Maritime History Panel
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Chair, Comment Matthew McKenzie University of Connecticut at Avery Point
- Atlantic Fisherman's Union (AFU) Colin J. Davis University of Alabama, Birmingham
- 'Co-Adventurers' - The Aversion of Scottish Herring Fishermen to Trade Union Organisation. Bill Jewell John Moores University, Liverpool
- Scots 'Herring Lassies' and Rrade Unionism, c. 1900-1950 Sam Davies John Moores University, Liverpool
- Italian waterfront strikes and social networks (Genoa and Venice, 1945-'69) Marco Caligari University of Venice
Roundtable: From Collective to Individual Rights: Lawyers Representing Workers in a Changing Political Economy
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Chair Jocelyn Wills Brooklyn College
- Daniel E. Clifton Attorney
- Ira Cure Attorney, St. Johns Law School
- Bertrand B. Pogrebin Attorney, NYU Law School
- Anne C. Vladeck Attorney, Columbia Law School
Workers' Resistance in Spaces of American Empire: Labor Struggles in the U.S., Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines in the Early Twentieth Century
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Chair, Comment Julie Greene University of Maryland
- The Army's Coolies: Chinese and Moro Military Labor and Racial Management in the United States' Pacific Empire Justin Jackson Columbia University
- Liberating Labor: Building the Road to New Empire in the U.S. Colonial Philippines Rebecca Tinio McKenna University of Notre Dame
- Labor Radicalism, Latina/o Nationalisms and U.S. Sugar Politics in the 1930s April Merleaux Florida International University
Roundtable: Excluded and Precarious Workers in the U.S.
Location: CWE Room 7-52
- Chair Richard Greenwald St. Joseph's College
- Linda Burnham National Research Coordinator of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA)
- Veronica Martinez-Matsuda ILR School, Cornell University
- Gretchen Purser Syracuse University
- Maria Figueroa Cornell University
The Golden Age of Proletarian Literature
Location: CWE Room 7-50
- Chair, Discussant Tim Sheard National Writers Union/UAW
- Working Class African American Radicalism Barbara Foley Rutgers University
- The Homelessness Narrative: Nineteen Thirties Bottom Dogs Fiction and Twenty-First Century Radicalism Laura Hapke New York City College of Technology
- Undermining Capitalist Pedagogy: Takiji Kobayashi’s Tōseikatsusha and the Ideology of the World Literature Paradigm John Maerhofer Roger Williams University
- Reassessing John Steinbeck Through a Historical Institutional Framework Stacy Warner Maddern University of Connecticut
Roundtable: New Directions in Anarchist Historiography? Roundtable Discussion of The Haymarket Conspiracy: Transatlantic Anarchist Networks by Timothy Messer-Kruse
Location: CWE Room 7-21
- Timothy Messer-Kruse Bowling Green State University
- Tom Goyens Salisbury University
- Mark Lause University of Cincinnati
- Norman Markowitz Rutgers University
The 'Public' Image: Political Activism and Shifting Definitions of Citizenship in the Twentieth Century
Location: CWE Room 7-19
- Chair, Comment Stephen Brier CUNY Graduate Center
- "The Public Be Damned": Free-Market Activism and the Decline of Union Power, 1977-1978 Jon Shelton University of Maryland, College Park
- "Nestle Kills Babies": Grassroots Campaign for Global Justice, 1976-1984 Paul Adler Georgetown University
- A New Union: Enlisting the Public in Worker Activism, 1970-1980s Naomi Williams University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Playboys and Partisans, Jokers and Jazzmen: Sex, Race, and Politics in the Cold War Nightclub Underground Stephen Duncan University of Maryland, College Park
Roundtable: Domestic Workers and Workers' Control in New York City
Location: CWE Room 7-15
- Chair Rebecca Lurie Consortium for Worker Education
- Matt Ryan Alliance for a Greater New York
- Ligia Guallpa Workers Justice Project
- Barbara Young National Organizer, National Domestic Workers Alliance
- Emma Yorra Center for Family Life in Sunset Park
Roundtable: Faculty Responses to University Corporatization: The Potential for Unionization and Collective Action
Location: CWE Room 7-10
- Risa Lieberwitz ILR School, Cornell University
- Jeff Grabelsky ILR School, Cornell University
- David Dobbie AFT, Michigan
- Rudy Fichtenbaum Wright State University
- Ellen Schrecker Yeshiva University
Session 5
Roundtable: Paterson Silk Worker Militancy and the Implications of 100 Years of Labor Radicalism
Location: CWE Auditorium
- Chair Erik Loomis University of Rhode Island
- Discussant Immanuel Ness Brooklyn College/CUNY
- Melvyn Dubofsky State University of New York, Binghamton
- Steve Golin Bloomfield College
- Jennifer Guglielmo Smith College
- Mary Anne Trasciatti Hofstra University
Beyond the Shop Floor: Communities on the Move
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Chair, Comment Cecelia Bucki Fairfield University
- Through the barricades: The opportunities and limits of Global Solidarity in a Midwestern Immigrant Community Jimmy Engren Luleå Tekniska Universitet
- The Young Catholic Workers Movement and Working-Class Mobilization in Mid-Twentieth Century Chile Tracey Jaffe University of Dayton
- "Thinking outside the PAC": Labor, Immigrant Struggles, and the Question of Political Action Mathieu Bonzom Université Paris-Est Créteil
- Sound of Da (Anti) Police (Organizing): Historical Lessons of the Limits of Grassroots Organizing Against Police Violence Daniel Horowitz Garcia Georgia State University
Roundtable: Gaining Pride at Work: Queer Union Experiences
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Chair Phil Tiemeyer Philadelphia University
- T. Judith Johnson Monroe County Public Defender Office, Civil Service Employees Association
- Bess Watts Monroe Community College
- Linda Donahue ILR School, Cornell University
Roundtable: Author Meets Critic: Barbara Garson, Down the Up Escalator: How the 99% Live in the Great Recession
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Ruth Milkman CUNY Graduate Center, and the Joseph F. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies
- Doug Henwood Author, Radio Host, and Contributor to The Nation
- Ed Ott The Murphy Institute, CUNY
- Barbara Garson Playwright, Author, Activist
Australia and the USA: Comparative and Transnational Perspectives
Location: CWE Room 7-52
- Chair, Discussant Francis Shor Wayne State University
- Controlling Consumption: A Comparative History of Rochdale Consumer Co-operatives in Australia and the USA Greg Patmore University of Sydney
- Co-author, with Greg Patmore Nikola Balnave Macquarie University
- The Vanishing 'Frontier of Opportunity': Unionisation and Labor Conflict in the U.S. and Australia, 1880-1914 Bradley Bowden Griffiths University, Queensland
Shelton Stromquist University of Iowa - Transnational Labor Activism Marilyn Lake University of Melbourne
Unmaking the New Deal: Labor, Class Politics, and the Rise of the Postwar Urban Order
Location: CWE Room 7-50
- Chair, Comment Steve Fraser New Labor Forum
- Labor and Liberal Republicanism: Making a Moderate Opposition to the New Deal Order Kit Smemo University of California, Santa Barbara
- "We Had Tied That Noose Around Our Necks": Urban Renewal, Grassroots Planning, and the Battle to Build the University of Illinois-Chicago, 1947-1965 Richard Anderson Princeton University
- Strange Bedfellows: The Fight Against Labor "Featherbedding" and the Paradoxes of Postwar Productivism Kurt Newman University of California, Santa Barbara
Equal Pay at 50
Location: CWE Room 7-22
- Chair, Comment Cynthia Harrison George Washington University
- The Transnational Forging of Equal Pay Eileen Boris University of California, Santa Barbara
Jill Jensen Penn State University - The Equal Pay Act in Law Teaching and Legal Advocacy Serena Mayeri University of Pennsylvania Law School
- "She Works Hard for the Money": A Critique of the Gender Gap in Earnings Sally Clarke University of Texas at Austin
Roundtable: In the Belly of the Beast: Organizing Scholars and Activists in North Carolina
Location: CWE Room 7-21
- David Zonderman North Carolina State University
- Robert Korstad Duke University
- Lisa Levenstein University of North Carolina, Greensboro
- Nancy MacLean Duke University
Roundtable: The Need for Cooperative Education
Location: CWE Room 7-15
- Chair Michael Menser CUNY Brooklyn College
- Ethan Earle Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - New York Office
- Omar Freilla Green Worker Cooperatives
- Richard Wolff University of Massachusetts and The New School
- Peter Ranis CUNY Graduate Center
Session 6
Big Ideas: Re-imagining Labor History
Location: CWE Auditorium
- Discussant Shelton Stromquist University of Iowa
- Chair Shana Redmond University of Southern California
- Great Strikes Revisited, 1892-1902: Why Leadership Mattered in the Gilded Age Leon Fink University of Illinois at Chicago
- Indigenous People and Industrial Dispute Resolution: some reflections from the Antipodes Kerry Taylor Massey University
- Theodore W. Allen's The Invention of the White Race and "Toward a Revolution in Labor History" Jeffrey B. Perry Independent Scholar
- Demanding the Wage: What Can We Learn from Marxist-Feminists Today? Christina Rousseau York University
Rights and Opportunities: Workers, Employers, and the Politics of Ideas
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Chair, Comment Kim Phillips-Fein NYU, Gallatin
- Equal Opportunity Reconstituted: Samuel Gompers, the AFL, and the Corporate Economy Claire Goldstene American University
- The Constitutional Bases for Legal Challenges to Union Political Assessments Amy Wallhermfechtel Saint Louis University
100 Years in the Making: Rethinking and Remembering the 1913 IWW's Portland Cannery Strike, 1913-1914 Michigan Copper Country Strike, and Italian Hall Tragedy
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Years in the Making: Working-Class Activism and the 1913-14 Michigan Copper Strike Aaron A. Goings Saint Martin's University
- Seems Like Yesterday: Community Memory and the Michigan Copper Country Strike, 1913-2013 Lindsay Hiltunen Western Illinois University
- Woody Guthrie Got it Right: New Perspectives on Violence against Strikers during the 1913-14 Michigan Copper Strike and Italian Hall Tragedy Gary Kaunonen Michigan Technological University
Roundtable: Following the Women: Working Women, the Labor Movement, and Economic Justice
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Chair Ileen A. DeVault ILR School, Cornell University
- Jessica Wilkerson University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
- Allison Elias University of Virginia
- Keona Ervin University of Missouri
Roundtable: Occupy Kensington: Community Support for Golden Farm Grocery Workers
Location: CWE Room 7-52
- Chair Michael Klein Occupy Kensington
- Katherine Barut New York Communities for Change
- Lucas Sanchez New York Communities for Change
- Eleanor Rodgers Socialist Alternative, Founder, Member of Occupy Kensington
- Gibb Surette Occupy Kensington, President, UAW Local 2330, Legal Services Staff Association
Intimacy, Invisibility, and Class Conflict in Service Workplaces across the Twentieth Century
Location: CWE Room 7-27
- Chair, Comment Jennifer Klein Yale University
- "You Will Feel Good About Yourself and Your Job": Gender, Class Formation, and Health Care Work in and around Pittsburgh, 1975-1985 Gabriel Winant Yale University
- We Will Handle It Ourselves: Rules, Norms, and the Micropolitics of Resistance Among Nursing Assistants Jillian Crocker University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- "Every domestic worker a union worker": African-American Domestics' Labor Activism and New Deal Labor Legislation in New York Vanessa May Seton Hall University
Roundtable: Domestic Workers' Organizing in the Americas: the Struggle for Justice beyond Borders
Location: CWE Room 7-22
- Mary Goldsmith Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco, México, D.F.
- Kathleen Coll Stanford University
- Maria del Carmen Cruz Martinez Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Household Workers
- Marcelina Bautista El Centro de Apoyo y Capacitación para Empleadas del Hogar (CACEH)
- Jill Shenker National Domestic Workers Alliance
Corruption, Organized Crime and the Labor Movement in Mid-Twentieth Century U.S.
Location: CWE Room 7-21
- Chair Joshua Freeman Queens College Graduate Center and Joseph F. Murphy Labor Institute, City University of New York
- Comment Robert Parmet York College, City University of New York
- New York's Garment Trucking Industry and the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union: A Study in the Complexities of Union Corruption David Witwer Penn State University, Harrisburg
- Kosher Food and the Mob: The Kashrus Supervisors Union and Labor Politics in Postwar New York City Roger Horowitz Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society, Hagley Museum and Library
Roundtable: The Many Battles of Blair Mountain
Location: CWE Room 7-19
- Chair Lou Martin Chatham University
- James Green University of Massachusetts-Boston
- Belmon Keeney Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College
- Katey Lauer The Alliance for Appalachia
Roundtable: Progressive Intellectuals And Labor's Internal Controversies: Lessons of LAWCHA Member Solidarity and Engagement
Location: CWE Room 7-15
- Chair Nick Unger Avondale Shipyard Research Project
- Ellen David-Friedman UC-Berkeley, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment
- John Borsos National Union of Health Care Workers
- Dan Clawson University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Nancy MacLean Duke University
Sex Work and the State: Regulation, Resistance, and Labor in the Americas
Location: CWE Room 7-10
- Chair Eileen Boris University of California, Santa Barbara
- Danger on the Set: Labor, Risk, and Health in the Adult Film Industry Heather Berg University of California, Santa Barbara
- (Re)Framing Trafficking: Labor, Rights, and Resistance Kate D'Adamo Sex Worker Outreach Project, New York
- Gender, Social Difference, and Persuasion: State Strategies and Individual Agency in the Implementation of the Cuban Revolution's National Campaign To End Prostitution Alyssa Garcia Pennsylvania State University
- Resisting the State: Sex Work and Third Party Criminalization Melissa Gira Grant Contributing Editor, Jacobin
- Challenging Gender Norms? Feminist Institutional Theory and the Nonprofit Sector Samatha Majic John Jay College, CUNY
- The Challenges of Sex Worker Unionisation Gregor Gall University of Bradford
Friday , June 7 ,
Film Screening: With a Stroke of the Chaveta & Shift Change
Location: CWE Auditorium
- Chair Daniel Walkowitz New York University
- With a Stroke of Chaveta Pam Sporn Director, Grito Productions
- Shift Change Melissa Young Filmmaker
Mark Dworkin Filmmaker
Session 7
Roundtable: From Sweatshop Floor to the Retail Store: Organizing along the global supply Chain: Warehouse Workers, the Wal-Mart Strike Wave, and new ways to build worker power and challenge the World's largest private-sector employer
Location: CWE Auditorium
- Discussant Nelson Lichtenstein UC, Santa Barbara
- Louis Guida Warehouse Workers United/Change to Win
- Marien Casilias-Pabellon New Labor
- Nick Rudikoff Warehouse Workers United/Change to Win
- Walmart Warehouse Strikers
Roundtable: Working-Class Tenant Struggles in New York City
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Chair John Alter CUNY/Center for Urban Community Services
- Roberta Gold Fordham University
- Mario Mazzoni Northern Manhattan Improvement Corp
- Andrés Mares Muro Former Organizer with Mirabal Sisters
Roundtable: Labor History in Secondary Social Studies: Pushing Back the Corporatized Curriculum A Workshop and Discussion
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Gigi Peterson SUNY, Cortland
- Conor Casey University of Washington, Seattle
- Brendan Maslauskas Dunn SUNY, Cortland
Roundtable: Global Women's Work
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Mary E. Frederickson Emory University
- Sonya Michel University of Maryland
- Beth English Princeton University
- Olga Sanmiguel-Valderrama University of Cincinnati
- Brigid O'Farrell Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Roundtable: Towards a New Caribbean Labor Front: Lessons of the Past and Future Prospects
Location: CWE Room 7-52
- Chair Prudence D. Cumberbatch Brooklyn College/CUNY
- Roger Toussaint Transport Workers Union
- Godfrey Vincent Tuskegee University
- Roderick Bush St. John’s University
- Malcolm Campbell Council of Progressive Trade Unions, Trinidad & Tobago
Thinking Critically About Community in the Organization of Women
Location: CWE Room 7-50
- Chair, Discussant Susan A. Glenn University of Washington
- "What can a Dollar Get Ya?": Resistance and Community in Italian-American Women's Wage Work, Northeastern Pennsylvania 1929-1941 Emma Staffaroni Sarah Lawrence College
- From the "Slave market" to the Union Hall: New York City's Black Women Workers during the Great Depression Lindsey Dayton Columbia University
- "Opportunity of a Lifetime": Paraprofessionals and the UFT in New York City, 1966-78 Nick Juravich Columbia University
- Jennifer Tammi Columbia University
Sisterhoods: Solidarity in Working-Class Women's Networks
Location: CWE Room 7-50
- Chair, Comment Elizabeth Faue Wayne State University
- "How a Working-Class Subject Came to Be: The Evolution of Grace Carlson's Political Consciousness." Donna Haverty-Stacke Hunter College, CUNY
- From Farm Girl to Rebel Girl: The Radicalization of Pearl McGill Janet Weaver University of Iowa
- Julia Ruuttila and the Private and Public Feminisms of the Radical Working Class Stephanie Taylor Georgetown University
U.S. Farm Workers, Agribusiness, and the State
Location: CWE Room 7-27
- Chair, Discussant Cindy Hahamovitch College of William & Marry
- From "Roll the Union On" to "Manpower" and Wage Rates: The USDA's Depoliticization of Farm Labor During the New Deal and World War II Jason Manthorne University of Georgia
- Cream of Exploitation: Agribusiness and Farmworker Agency, the case of FLOC Katie Sutrina Northern Illinois University
- Struggling for Unity, the Farm Workers' Movement and the Many Facets of Immigration, 1962 - 1975 Gabriel Lattanzio University of Paris Diderot
Historical Perspectives on Health and Safety
Location: CWE Room 7-21
- Chair, Discussant Laurie Green University of Texas at Austin
- Early Demands for a Right to Know about Workplace Health Hazards: Steelworkers' Activism over Coke Oven Emissions, 1968-1976 Alan Derickson Penn State University, University Park
- "Hot, noisy, dirty, dusty, hazardous": Black Workers, Civil Rights, and the Politics of Occupational Health and Safety in Detroit-Area Foundries, 1925-1975 Josiah Rector Wayne State University
- Can we learn from a Toxic Past? U.S. Smelters, Public Health, and the Environment in the 20th Century Marianne Sullivan William Paterson University of New Jersey
Neoliberalism, Labor and Militarization in Central America: Honduras
Location: CWE Room 7-19
- Chair Judith Ancel University of Missouri, Kansas City
- Annie Bird Rights Action, Washington D.C.
- Alex Main Center for Economic and Policy Analysis
- Lucy Pagoada Front for National Resistance of the People
- Liana Foxvog International Labor Rights Forum
Roundtable: Labor, Working Families, and the Grassroots Fight for Public Education
Location: CWE Room 7-15
- Chair Jessie Ramey University of Pittsburgh.
- Kathy M. Newman Carnegie Mellon University
- Rebecca Poyourow University of Pennsylvania
Session 8
Roundtable: Working Class Education and the Attack on Labor Education Centers
Location: CWE Auditorium
- Chair Stephen Leberstein Brooklyn College, City University of New York
- Judith Ancel University of Missouri, Kansas City
- Bill Adams Trade Union Congress, Yorkshire and Humber
- Paul Mishler University of Indiana, South Bend
- Roland Zullo University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations
- Mike Mauer AAUP, Washington, D.C.
- Liz Rees Trades Union Congress, London, U.K.
Workers' Rights
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Chair, Discussant Bryan D. Palmer Trent University
- Building an Accessible House of Labour: Work, Disability Rights, and the Canadian Labour Movement Dustin Galer University of Toronto
- Emile Durkheim's Reform of Occupational Groups: a Socialist Conception of Professional Rights and Social Justice Mélanie Plouviez Paris II Panthéon-Assas University
- Going beyond the labor-community coalition” model: Lessons from New Orleans and the Avondale Shipyard fight Nick Unger Avondale Shipyard Research Project
- Labor Struggles at Canadian Mining Companies in Mexico Paul G. Bocking York University
Mobilizing Transnational Solidarity
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Chair, Discussant James Gregory University of Washington
- "El Tío Sam sólo demanda igualdad de sacrificio": The ILO's Joint Bolivian-United States Labor Commission during World War II Michael J. Murphy SUNY, Stony Brook
Hernán Pruden SUNY, Stony Brook - Trade Unions in the World of International Diplomacy: An Analysis of Trade Union Participation in Governmental Diplomacy in Denmark Carsten Strøby Jensen University of Copenhagen
Roundtable: Putting Labor History in the Public Schools: A Legislative Approach
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Cecelia Bucki Fairfield University
- Kenneth Germanson Wisconsin Labor History Society
- Larry Spivack Illinois Labor History Society
- Stephen Kass Greater New Haven Labor History Association
Memory in Service of Activism: The Triangle Fire Centennial and the Clara Lemlich Awards
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Chair, Comment Rose Imperato Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition
- Organizing Commemoration and Remembrance of the Triangle Factory Fire Andi Sosin Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition
Daniel Levinson Wilk Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY) - The Clara Lemlich Awards for Social Activism Rachel Bernstein LaborArts
Evelyn Jones Rich LaborArts, Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation
Esther Cohen LaborArts - Teaching Labor: Lessons from The Triangle Factory Fire Centennial Rob Linne Adelphi University
Roundtable: Organizing Domestic Workers in New York, London, & Los Angeles
Location: BMCC, 8th Floor Conference Room
- Mark Nowak Manhattanville College
- Peter Rachleff Macalester College
- Premilla Nadasen Queens College, CUNY
- Susanna Rosenbaum City College CUNY
- Robyn Spencer Lehman College
Roundtable: A New Front for Labor: Unionized Worker Cooperatives
Location: CWE Room 7-52
- Chair Christopher Michael CUNY Graduate Center and Law School
- Michael Peck Mondragon USA
- Chris Cooper Ohio Employee Ownership Center
- Michael Elsas Cooperative Home Care Associates
- Keith Joseph Service Employees International Union
Detroit: I Do Mind Dying
Location: CWE Room 7-50
- Dan Georgakas Historian and Co-Author
- Marvin Surkin Political Scientist and Co-Author
- Ron Reosti Detroit Civil Rights Attorney
- Mike Hamlin Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and Wayne State University
Forging Working-Class Identities through Workers' Newspapers
Location: CWE Room 7-22
- Chair David Scott Witwer Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg
- The Intersection of Class and Ethnicity in Chicago's Foreign-Language Press Jon Bekken Albright College
- Using the Masters' Tools: Constructing a Revolutionary Working-Class Identity in the Pages of the Cronaca Sovversiva Andrew Hoyt University of Minnesota
- Voz Humana: Print culture and the construction of the workers' identity in Puerto Rico, 1873-1910 Jorell A. Meléndez Badillo Teacher, Independent Scholar
- Rereading American Syndicalism: The Immigrant Anarchist Press of Paterson, New Jersey, and the Unknown History of the Industrial Workers of the World Kenyon Zimmer University of Texas at Arlington
- Jose Castilla and España Libre: Waging Satire Against the Dictatorship Montse Feu University of Houston
"The Teamsters' War on Poverty": Labor's Version of Civil Rights, Social Rights, and Community Activism
Location: CWE Room 7-21
- Chair Rosemary Feurer Northern Illinois University
- Comment Michael Pierce University of Arkansas
- Social and Civil Rights Unionism: Chicago's Teamsters Local 743 Liesl Orenic Dominican University
- A Trade Union Oriented War on the Slums Bob Bussel University of Oregon
- The Alliance for Labor Action: Another Kind of Federation? Civic, Social and Civil Rights Unionism among 'The Poor', 1969-1972 Lisa Phillips Indiana State University
Roundtable: Organizing Carwash Workers in NYC
Location: CWE Room 7-19
- Chair, Discussant Tony Perlstein Center for Popular Democracy
- Hilary Klein Make the Road NY
- Lorelei Salas Make the Road NY
- Joseph Dorismond RWDSU
- TBD Carwash Campaign Worker-Organizer
Roundtable: Contingent Academic Labor: Organizing the New Faculty Majority
Location: CWE Room 7-15
- Chair Vincent Tirelli Brooklyn College/CUNY
- Rana Jaleel New York University
- Rich Moser Rutgers AAUP-AFT
- Malini Cadambi Service Employees International Union
- Marcia Newfield City University of New York, PSC-CUNY
The Erosion of Labor Law and Worker Insurgency against Capital’s Offensive
Location: CWE Room 7-10
- John Cicero City University of New York Law School
- Harris Freeman Western New England University
- Michael Goldfield Wayne State University
- James Gray Pope Rutgers University Law School
Session 9
Roundtable: The Chicago Teachers Union Strike: Social Movement Unionism and the Defense of Public Education
Location: CWE Auditorium
- Chair, Comment Tom Alter University of Illinois at Chicago
- Steven Ashby University of Illinois, Labor Education Program
- Megan Behrent Public School Teacher, Social Activist
- Peter Brogan York University
- Brian Jones CUNY Graduate Center
- Michael Fabricant Hunter College School of Social Work, CUNY, PSC-CUNY
- Becca Bor Chicago Teachers Union
Feminist Labor Organizing in the 1970s
Location: CWE Room 7-52
- Socialist Feminists Organize: Boston and Chicago Linda Gordon New York University
- New York City Day Care Campaign 1976-1974 Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall SUNY, Old Westbury
- Feminism, Coalition Politics, and Domestic Workers' Campaign for Minimum Wage Premilla Nadasen Queens College, CUNY
Roundtable: "Let's Get to Work": Roundtable on Community, Labor, and City Victories in New Haven
Location: CWE Room 7-51
- Tyisha Walker Local 35 UNITE-HERE, Board of Alderman
- Major Ruth New Haven Works
- Delphine Clyburn Board of Alderman
- Barbara Vereen Local 34, UNITE-HERE
- Mary Reynolds New Haven Works
Comparative Labor History in the 20th Century: States, Unions, Struggles
Location: CWE Room 7-50
- Chair, Discussant Jennifer Klein Yale University
- The Oilfields Workers' Trade Union and Working Class Political Formations Godfrey Vincent Tuskegee University
- The Golden Age of Charrismo: Workers, Authoritarianism, and the Political Machinery of Post-Revolutionary Mexico Michael Snodgrass Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
- Worker Resistance in Times of Austerity - British Public Sector Workers in 1979 and Today Tara Martin Central Ohio Technical College
- Labor and Exctractivism in the Andes: Colombian Coal unions and Twenty-First Century Socialism Aviva Chomsky Salem State University
Roundtable: Mother Jones Three Ways : A Workshop for Teachers
Location: CWE Room 7-33
- Rosemary Feurer Northern Illinois University
- Leigh Campbell-Hale Fairview High School
Labor and the Arts
Location: CWE Room 7-27
- Chair, Discussant Peter Rachleff Macalester College
- Bread and Roses: The Evolution of a Song and the Memory of the Lawrence Strike Tom Juravich University of Massachusetts
- Seeing Color and Gender: Local 65 Distributive Workers' Union Rank-and-File Photographers and the Representation of Diversity Carol Quirke SUNY, Old Westbury
- Love, Sweat, and Tears: A Poignant Expression of Love and Sacrifice on the Picket Lines in Salt of the Earth Sharron Greaves Nyack College
- Historical Memory and Commemoration as Activism: On Equal Terms Susan Eisenberg Brandeis University
Union Organizing in the Twentieth Century
Location: CWE Room 7-22
- Chair, Discussant Leon Fink University of Illinois at Chicago
- Class, Gender, and Ethnicity at Work in the Political Economy of Minneapolis in the 1910s Lars Olsson Linneaus University
- Industrial Unionism and Labor Militancy in the Post-World War II East Texas Piney Woods: The Lone Star Steel Strikes of 1957 and 1968-69 David Anderson Louisiana Tech University
- "No More Sweating it Out:" Organizing Literature and Gendered Messages in the Post-War United States Stephen Patnode State University of New York at Farmingdale
- Socializing Wages to Emancipate Casual Workers?: The French Experience of the Intermittents du Spectacle System Mathieu Grégoire Amiens University
Roundtable: The "New" Movements: "We won't pay for your crisis - we are your crisis"
Location: CWE Room 7-21
- Chair, Discussant Penny Lewis The Murphy Institute, CUNY
- Marina Sitrin CUNY Graduate Center
- Dario Azzellini Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
- Luis Moreno-Caballud University of Pennsylvania
Roundtable: The Working-Class Presence: Does History Matter to Workers When Workers Matter to History?
Location: CWE Room 7-19
- Chair Michael Merrill The Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies, SUNY Empire State College
- Stephen Flynn High School for Construction Trades, Engineering and Architecture (CTEA)
- Richard Wells The Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies
- Christine Zeigler-MacPherson The Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies
Roundtable: Reclaiming Labor's Lost Legacy: The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
Location: CWE Room 7-15
- Chair, Introductions Mike Honey University of Washington, Tacoma
- William P. Jones University of Wisconsin, Madison
- Barbara Ransby University of Illinois, Chicago
- Dorian T. Warren Columbia University
- Thomas Jackson University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Roundtable: Building a Living Wage Movement in New York City, 2005 to 2012
Location: CWE Room 7-10
- Chair Jeff Eichler Retail Organizing Project, 2004-2012
- Ava Farkas Living Wage NYC Campaign, 2009-2012
- Edison Bond, Jr. Ella Baker Fellow, Micah Institute, New York Theological Seminary
- Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition
- Michael Yellin LRA Consulting
Saturday , June 8 ,
Plenary: Looking Forward: New Directions and Strategies for Labor
Location: The Great Hall, Cooper Union
- Opening Remarks John Wilhelm Past President, UNITE-HERE
- Chair Ruth Milkman CUNY Graduate Center and Murphy Institute for Worker Education
- Ed Ott Past President, New York Central Labor Council
- Jaribu Hill Executive Director, Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rights
- Erik Forman Jimmy John’s Workers Union, Industrial Workers of the World
- Linda Burnham Research Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance
- Closing Remarks Elaine Bernard Executive Director, Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School
Where: The Great Hall, Cooper Union, 7 East 7th Street, (@ 3rd Ave) New York, NY 10003 (directions)
The LAWCHA closing plenary will examine the recent past and future prospects for labor and the working class. Speakers will examine and reflect on the decline of organized labor since the 1960s and offer new directions for the labor movement. They include labor leaders, activists, and academics, who will shed light on recent initiatives to rebuild a vibrant workers' movement at the grassroots through community-labor organizations, traditional trade unions, and new forms of worker organization, drawing on organizing tactics and forms of collective action in which immigrants, people of color, and women workers have played central roles. These efforts will take note of the challenges and opportunities that new movements face in the rapidly changing global neoliberal economic system.
Sunday , June 9 ,
Tour: Museum of the City of New York: Exhibit on Activist New York
- Guide Stephen Petrus Museum of the City of New York
Join Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow Stephen Petrus at the Museum of the City of New York for a tour of the exhibition Activist New York, an exploration of the history of social activism in the city from the colonial era to the present. The exhibition shows that reform and radical movements that flourished in New York often had national implications. On issues as diverse as historic preservation, civil rights, wages, sexual orientation, and religious freedom, New Yorkers have mobilized to advance fresh agendas. Using artifacts, photographs, audio and visual presentations, Activist New York presents the passions and conflicts that underlie the city's history of agitation.
The guided tour is limited to 25 participants, so registration is required. To register, email Stephen Petrus.