How Class Works Conference
ALL ARE WELCOME AT THE HOW CLASS WORKS – 2010 CONFERENCE
State University of New York at Stony Brook
June 3-5, 2010
The latest in Working-Class Studies from over 200 labor-oriented academics and union and community activists – including Gene Bruskin, Bill Fletcher, Sherry Linkon, and Maria Maisto, in presentations from eighteen countries
Opening Plenary Speaker:
Larry Cohen, President Communications Workers of America
Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 7 p.m.
WCSA Business Meeting:
Saturday, June 5, 12:45-1:45, location TBA
Full Schedule and Registration/Housing Information at http://www.stonybrook.edu/workingclass/conference/2010/
Register soon — registration fees go up after May 3. WCSA members will receive a $10 rebate on the conference registration fee.
Communications Committee Report
The Communications Committee has established the core of an editorial board for the WCSA journal we hope to establish soon. Members are: Thulani Davis, Fernando Gapasin, Pepi Leistyna, Jack Metzgar, David Roediger, Janet Zandy, and Michael Zweig. We have decided to develop an on-line journal rather than a printed one, and to make it peer-reviewed with standards that would support tenure applications. The scope of the journal will be as broad as working class studies, stressing high quality in intellectual and artistic expression. We will communicate with all members as soon as we have developed a review process and an appropriate call for submissions, the next items on our agenda. Meanwhile, we continue to negotiate our relationship with New Labor Forum, and encourage all WCSA members to subscribe to New Labor Forum through our website , where discount rates are available to all WCSA members.
Membership Report
In August of 2009 the WCSA agreed to contract with Patty LaPresta to have her perform administrative and clerical tasks for the Association. So far her efforts have brought tangible results. It was largely through her efforst in the membership renewal drive this year that we’ve received more renewals than we typically receive in the November through February renewal drive. She has also enabled us to streamline the membershp process. Many thanks to her for her efforts.
We ended 2009 with nearly 200 members. We expect this number to increase in the months leading up to the How Class Works conference in Stony Brook. We ended 2009 with nearly 200 members. We currently have 129 individual memberships, and we expect this number to increase in the months leading up to the How Class Works conference in Stony Brook. We currently have five institutional memberships. These institutional memberships include the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State Unviersity, University of California – Hastings College of Law, Haymarket Books, the Labor Studies Program at Indiana University, and Los Rios College Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2279.
Graduate Committee
Graduate students attending the How Class Works Conference this June 2010 are encouraged to attend the grad student social TBA at the conference. The Graduate Committee of the WCSA intends for the social to connect new and returning grad students members of the WCSA. Graduate student members are also encouraged to attend the round-table discussion at the conference on the job market (Saturday, 5 June 2010 from 2-3:30 p.m.). In thinking about our many research interests, the committee asks grad student members and more senior faculty attending the conference to be on the lookout for a mentorship form designed to assist grad students interested in working-class studies. More information on the mentorship program to follow at the conference. Contact Alisa Balestra for more information.
Member News
Ellen Dannin, Fannie Weiss Distinguished Faculty Scholar and Professor of Law at Penn State Dickinson School of Law, has published two papers on contemporary labor law. “Hoffman Plastics as Labor Law – Equality at Last for Immigrant Workers?” examines the Supreme Court case involving Hoffman Plastics, which is popularly viewed as a case that imposed penalties unique to immigrant workers. The Supreme Court decision in Hoffman Plastics can relieve an employer that illegally fires an undocumented worker from owing back pay for violations of the National Labor Relations Act; however, the sad truth is, that rather than creating an injury unique to immigrants, Hoffman Plastics is better seen as part of the long American tradition of judicial hostility toward unions and labor law with roots in the 1930s and even earlier. The Supreme Court held that, although Hoffman Plastics violated the NLRA by firing Jose Castro in retaliation for his union activities, Hoffman Plastics owed no back pay because Castro had violated immigration laws. The judicial tradition of refusing to enforce the rights Congress created under the NLRA applies equally to immigrant and native workers. This does not mean that immigration status, law, and policy played no role in Hoffman Plastics’ outcome. Rather, we cannot fully understand Hoffman Plastics – and how to redress the situation – unless we understand the roots of Hoffman Plastics. That history includes an all-out attack on the NLRA and unions by American elites, including urging employers to disobey the law; a split union movement whose battleground included the NLRB; and a judiciary willing to “judicially amend” the NLRA to add provisions Congress had rejected.
Dannin has also authored a piece on the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). She argues that unions cannot survive – and certainly cannot thrive – in a country whose core values are inhospitable to the essence of what unions as worker representatives are and do. Taking Back the Workers’ Law urges taking a fresh look at the NLRA, seeing it as the Workers’ Law with a potential for reinvigorating the labor movement and saving the soul of this country. That potential springs from the NLRA’s policies – not as a list of simple statements of purpose, but, rather, as mapping to values of industrial and social democracy, solidarity, social and economic justice, fair wages and working conditions, equality, and industrial and social peace. The NLRA itself and its policies embody values that were intended to, and still can, transform our workplaces and our society.
Jeanne Bryner’s play, Foxglove Canyon, will be performed at a national conference, “Understanding Patients’ Lives: Personal Meaning, Compassion, and Spirituality” at the Institute for Professional Inquiry at Summa Health Care, Akron,Ohio, April 28, 2010. Dr. William Breitbart and Dr. Lenore Buckley will also give presentations that explore the complex psycho-social, cultural, and spiritual processes that define care between patients and their caregivers.