Claim OwnershipReinventing Solidarity
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Podcast by CUNY SLU
63 Episodes
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At a live event at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, CUNY SLU Assistant Professor of Labor Studies Cameron Black moderated a lively panel discussion of Cedric de Leon’s new book, Freedom Train: Black Politics and the Story of Interracial Labor Solidarity (University of California Press, 2025). The panel also included author and activist Bill Fletcher Jr. and Tamara Lee, Associate Professor, Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Rutgers University
At a live event at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, New Labor Forum Editor-at-Large Micah Uetricht interviews the journal's new Editor Chris Maisano, who introduces himself, offers some thoughts about the current state of the labor movement, and discusses his article "Does 'Left-Conservatism' Have a Future?" from the Fall 2025 issue of New Labor Forum.
In this episode of Reinventing Solidarity, we feature a keynote address from National Education Association president Becky Pringle from a conference titled "Labor and the Crisis of Democracy," hosted by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and co-sponsored with the Cornell University Worker Institute. Pringle takes stock of the attacks on workers, free speech, and basic democratic rights, but argues, “Unions were built for this moment” of fighting back.
This episode brings together Joanna Wuest, Brittani Murray, and Jaz Brisack to discuss how queer organizers build community within their workplaces to support civil rights and social justice movements and share strategies for building power to defend workplaces and vulnerable communities, as we witness increased attacks on the rights and safety of LGBTQIA+ people, especially transgender individuals, at the same time as an unprecedented assault on all workers’ rights.
New Labor Forum’s Micah Uetricht speaks with labor organizer and former Starbucks barista Jaz Brisack about the Starbucks campaign, the practice of salting, and their new book Get on the Job and Organize: Standing Up for a Better Workplace and a Better World.
Historian Erik Baker talks to New Labor Forum's Micah Uetricht about the sanctified place of the entrepreneur in American history, and why the entrepreneurial work ethic is at the core of how the Right hopes to remake workers and citizens.
Episode 57 - Can Federal Workers Beat DOGE? by CUNY SLU
New Labor Forum editor-at-large Micah Uetricht speaks to the Center for Working-Class Politics's Jared Abbott about Democrats losing working-class voters, why it matters, and the prospects for reversing it.
Understanding what labor must do under a hostile new presidential administration requires reflection on unions’ successful political strategies in recent years, the nature of contemporary capitalism, the role of political education in labor, and much more. Bob Master moderates a recent and wide-ranging panel discussion on these issues at CUNY’s School of Labor and Urban Studies.
It's been a new day in the United Auto Workers since the election of Shawn Fain as president in 2023, with the union carrying out an aggressive organizing and political program that has established the UAW as a major presence in American life. New Labor Forum's Micah Uetricht spoke to Jonah Furman, a top aide to Fain, about the union's strategy, its various wins and losses among nonunion auto manufacturers in the American South, its relationship to the Democratic Party under President Joe Biden, and the impact of a Donald Trump presidency on the union and labor as a whole.
What does the rise of artificial intelligence mean for workers and organized labor? And just what is AI, anyway? New Labor Forum editor-at-large discusses these questions and more with labor reporter Alex Press and technology reporter and editor Ed Ongweso, Jr.
How free was the imposition of the free trade model in the late-twentieth century? Not very, suggests political scientist Adam Dean’s research. The neoliberal trade model that has come to dominate the globe was imposed through repressive measures against the trade unions that opposed it in country after country. Dean talks to New Labor Forum’s Micah Uetricht about this history and what it means for the future of trade policy across the globe.
Times change, in society, politics, and economics, but the labor movement rarely does. Which makes the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) a rare bird in US labor. New Labor Forum editor-at-large Micah Uetricht speaks to EWOC organizer Megan Svoboda about the project's origins in the coronavirus pandemic and how it has grown to a major national organization to aid workers in any industry, anywhere in the United States to take collective action and, frequently, to unionize.
Why are unions essential to LGBTQ liberation? Why is union organizing that advocates for all workers essential to uplifting queer workers? And why is queer advocacy so commonsense to many of today’s unionized workers? Political scientist Joanna Wuest explores these questions and more in a conversation with New Labor Forum editor-at-large Micah Uetricht for our podcast Reinventing Solidarity.
As innovative new union organizing campaigns have taken off around the country in recent years, Rutgers labor scholar Eric Blanc argues that we can see the emergence of a new organizing model that has the potential to meet the moment. He calls it "worker-to-worker organizing," a concept he explored in his Winter 2024 New Labor Forum article "Worker-to-Worker Organizing Goes Viral" and in his forthcoming book We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big (University of California Press). New Labor Forum editor-at-large Micah Uetricht spoke to Blanc about the model's constituent parts, the role of young workers' increasingly progressive and pro-labor sentiments in the current moment of labor upsurge, and why worker-to-worker organizing can scale up in a way he says the "staff-intensive" model can't.
At a time of crushing childcare costs in New York City and around the country, the labor-backed Child Care Facilitated Enrollment Project is one bright spot for working-class families. New Labor Forum editor-at-large Micah Uetricht spoke to United Federation of Teachers vice president for Academic High Schools and chair of the New York Union Child Care Coalition Janella Hinds and Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi, representing the 28th assembly district in Queens in the New York state legislature, about the program.
The United Auto Workers achieved a real breakthrough in their 2023 strike against the Big Three automakers. For this episode, our new editor-at-large Micah Uetricht interviews longtime labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein about his piece in the Spring 2024 issue of New Labor Forum assessing the wins in the contract, the corruption scandals and subsequent new union leadership victory that led to the strike, the UAW's prospects for riding this momentum into organizing nonunion automakers like Volkswagen and Tesla, and more.
In the work of creating a more just and sustainable world, which strategies hold the most promise for overcoming the enormous obstacles inherent in 21st century capitalism? A recent book, Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World by Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce, tackles this question head on. Based on interviews with leading activists, the authors draw vital lessons from organizations and movements – including the New Georgia Project, Make the Road, the Fight for 15, Occupy Wall Street, and the Gay Men's Health Crisis – that have achieved substantial victories. Here, we present the book’s authors in conversation with MacArthur fellow and United We Dream co-founder Cristina Jimenez.
In this episode we examine the recent threatened strike and massive contract victory of the Teamsters as that union took on UPS, the nation’s largest unionized private sector employer. In September 2023, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke about the strike weapon and labor’s resurgence at a large public forum hosted by the School of Labor and Urban Studies. Following his talk, he engaged with a panel of prominent labor activists and scholars. We feature highlights from O’Brien’s keynote address and his animated exchange with one of those panelists, the labor organizer and scholar Jane McAlevey.
This episode focuses on a discussion of publicly funded and operated health care in the United States. If this might seem a pipe dream with no national precedence, the authors of the recent book, Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs, suggest it’s not. They describe the current system of VA Healthcare as a model for excellence and equity, worthy of support among public health care activists. Our Veterans, reviewed in the spring 2023 issue of New Labor Forum, offers a broad examination of Veterans Affairs, as well as essential information about the cost, quality, and effectiveness of healthcare provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
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