Power At Work

In this very special blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Julie Su, the United States Secretary of Labor. Watch now to hear about Su’s role as the acting secretary along with her accomplishments in the position. Also learn about Su’s opinions on the

For decades, the narrative surrounding organized labor in the United States has been one of decline. Union membership has plummeted by over 60% since 1970, and worker participation in strikes saw an even more dramatic 90% drop. The watershed moment came in 1981 when President Reagan’s decision to fire striking

This story was originally published by Workday Magazine.

Mariam Karkache has worked as a barista for over six years at different establishments in Minneapolis. Her current job as a barista lead at Café Cerés at the Linden Hills location became her first unionized position on August 3, when 30 workers

In this very special blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Bernie Sanders, the senior United States senator from Vermont. Listen now to hear Senator Sanders’ opinion on the current status of the labor movement and worker power, along with his views on the

Recent analyses of the American labor movement have centered around two opposing facts. On the one hand, last year union density, or the percentage of the labor force that are union members, reached its lowest point in the more than 90 years the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has collected this

I appeared on Yahoo! Finance with Julie Hyman and Joshua Lipton to discuss the likely longshore strike against the East Coast and Gulf Coast ports that could begin at midnight on September 30.  I expect the ILA to move forward with its strike and it has the potential to last

In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Amy Chin-Lai, the president of the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union (NPEU), and Hannah Stephens, a Vice President for Organizing with the NPEU. Watch now to learn about the NPEU and their successes organizing in the

In this edition of The Power Hour, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Roberto Corrada from the Denver University Sturm College of Law and Harry Katz from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations to discuss arbitration, organizing in college athletics, general

I appeared on Bloomberg TV’s Balance of Power with Joe Mathieu and Kailey Lentz on Monday, September 16 to discuss several issues important to workers and worker power.

First, we discussed Vice-President Kamala Harris’s meeting with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the prospect of a Teamsters endorsement. I listed

Hundreds of trade unionists and several high-profile Massachusetts politicians gathered outside of the Hilton Park Plaza Hotel for the Greater Boston Labor Council’s annual Labor Day breakfast on September 3. Rather than merely celebrating the holiday, the event turned into a large-scale show of support for the close to 1,000

On Labor Day, Monday, September 2, the Greater Boston Labor Council held their annual Labor Day Breakfast. The event featured many notable speakers, from Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey and US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey to labor leaders such as Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Chrissy Lynch. This breakfast was unlike

Last month, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt delivered a provocative talk at Stanford’s School of Engineering. He claimed that Google is falling behind Anthropic and OpenAI in the latest wave of technological innovation because Google prioritizes engineers’ work-life balance over winning the innovation race. The recorded talk went viral on

Unionization and an interest in worker power may seem to be far from the minds of younger generations. However, Generation Z — born between 1997 and 2012, with those a part of it ranging from 12 to 27 years old today — has shown record breaking support for unions, signaling

This story was originally published by Common Dreams.

“The new jobs of the South will be union jobs,” said Tim Smith, a regional director for the United Auto Workers, after the union announced Tuesday that 1,000 workers at Ultium Cells in Spring Hill, Tennessee had voted to form a collective