A veteran labor organizer whose tactics have earned her admiration—and condemnation—McAlevey pulls no punches. That’s the spirit that infuses this memoir/manifesto, which calls for putting the “movement” back into the labor movement. McAlevey argues that unions must make connections to communities and social justice campaigns if they’re going to renew themselves and transform the economy. Read More
I sat down with AlterNet’s Sarah Jaffe to talk about organizing and my book Raising Expectations. Read it on AlterNet. Sarah Jaffe: You start the book out with the aftermath of the 2000 election in Florida, and of course we just finished a presidential election where organized labor went all-out to elect President Obama. Read More
Host Cecil Prescod interviews labor activist Jane McAlevey about the state of the labor movement and how to make unions matter again. McAlevey has been an organizer in the labor and environmental justice movements for the last twenty years. She is a PhD candidate at CUNY Graduate Center and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read More
On December 14th, just after Michigan voted to go right-to-work-for-less, I sat down with CounterSpin at FAIR.org. Click here to listen online. Read More
Today, fewer than 7 percent of American private-sector workers belong to a union, the lowest percentage since the beginning of the 20th century. Union organizer Jane McAlevey looks at the state of the American labor movement and describes her experiences fighting the bosses and national labor leaders. In Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement, she tells the story of a number of dramatic organizing and contract victories, and the unconventional strategies that helped achieve them, and looks at ways to revive the labor movement. Read More