Media Coverage
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An Organizer Reflects on Where Labor Stands Now: Jane McAlevey reflects on her life's work

; Jane McAlevey, labor organizer, columnist for The Nation and the author of several books, including (with Abby Lawlor) Rules to Win By: Power and Participation in Union Negotiations (Oxford University Press, 2023), reflects on her life’s work in organizing and recent wins for labor, and what she sees as crucial for workers to do if they want to continue the positive streak for unions. Read More

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How Workers Win: Labor Organizer Jane McAlevey on Her Life & Strategies to Beat the Power Structure

Part 1: Democracy Now! speaks with the celebrated labor organizer and writer Jane McAlevey about the historic victory for Volkswagen employees at a Chattanooga, Tennessee, factory who voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers union. The plant will become the first foreign-owned car factory in the South to unionize. “This win wasn’t just a win — it was what we would call a beatdown,” says McAlevey, who says the UAW’s recent success is a result of direct democracy and smart, strategic organizing that could lead to the unionizing of Mercedes workers in Alabama. Read More

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UAW And The New Era Of Labor Empowerment w/ Jane McAlevey: Jane McAlevey explores what we can learn from the UAW’s incredible militancy, and addresses the biggest errors she sees facing modern unionization attempts.

https://janemcalevey.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/The-State-Of-Labor-After-The-UAWs-Victory-_-Jane-McAlevey-_-TMR.m4a Jane McAlevey walks through her insider perspective on the evolution of the labor movement over the last three decades, with the Chicago Teachers Union’s election of Karen Lewis in 2010 marking a major turning point in the raising of worker expectations across the US, planting the seeds for a renaissance of worker action over the next decade, before the Pandemic slammed a brief lid on growing discontent, ramping up the pressure on the working class and resulting in the post-COVID explosion of labor action across the US. Read More

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How Jane McAlevey Transformed the Labor Movement: The renowned organizer and theorist has a terminal-cancer diagnosis. But she has long been fighting the clock.

(excerpts…) Organizing is not an art of telling people what to do, McAlevey explains, but of listening for what they cannot abide… McAlevey has become not just an expert organizer but a social scientist of organizing’s methodology. She has written four books that have become touchstones for a new generation of labor leaders. Read More