Events
Upcoming Events
February 27, 2025: Organizing Domestic Care Workers, A Community Discussion Panel
Join Labor@Wayne for a community discussion on the challenges facing domestic care workers in the United States and the obstacles that come with organizing workers in the domestic care industry on Thursday, February 27th, at the Walter P Reuther Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs. The panel discussion will begin at 4:00PM in the second-floor conference room and will conclude at 6:00PM. Food and beverage will be provided. Our panelists include Jennifer Guglielmo, Mia Michael, and Heidi Gottfried.
Jennifer Guglielmo specializes in labor and working-class women's histories in the US. She is an associate professor of history at Smith College and the author of Living the Revolution: Italian Women's Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945 (2010). Most recently, she co-directed a public history project with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, to bring the history of domestic worker organizing into the core of their political education curriculum. Mia Michael's scholarship centers the lives of working-class women of color and migrants in the United States and explores their prolonged struggle for dignity and legal rights they waged while employed as nannies, housecleaners and caretakers during the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Heidi Gottfried received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and her research interests span areas, ranging from sociology of work, the care economy, sociology of gender, welfare state, feminist theory, labor movements, to comparative political economy.
Click HERE for a digital copy of the event flyer (PNG)
Previous Events
November 11, 2024: Joe Trotter, Building the Black City: The Transformation of American Life
Dr. Joe Trotter is the Giant Eagle University Professor of History and Social Justice as well as the past Chair of the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He serves as the founding director of Carnegie Mellon’s Center for African-American Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE). Trotter’s Building the Black City: The Transformation of American Life shows how African Americans built and rebuilt thriving cities for themselves, even as their unpaid and underpaid labor enriched the nation's economic, political, and cultural elites. Trotter’s prolific scholarship, including works like Race and Renaissance: African Americans in Pittsburgh since World War II and Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America, provide an astounding range of history spread across the country, all the way from the pre-industrial era to today.
Click HERE for a link to an online recording of the event (YouTube) and HERE for a digital copy of the event flyer (PNG)
September 18, 2024: Ruth Milkman, A New Political Generation: Power Resource Theory and 21st Century Union Organizing
Dr. Ruth Milkman is a sociologist of labor and labor movements whose work has focused on work and organized labor in the United States’ past, present, and future. Her most recent works include Immigrant Labor and the New Precariat (2020) and On Gender, Labor and Inequality (2016). Dr. Milkman joins Labor@Wayne to give our next Irving Bluestone Lectureship on Workplace Issues on Wednesday, September 18th, from 4:00 to 6:00 PM at the Wayne State Student Center, in Room Hilberry D. This event is made possible thanks to support from the Fraser Center for Workplace Issues and the Center for Labor Studies, Labor@Wayne, the Walter P. Reuther Library, and the Department of Political Science.
Click HERE for a link to an online recording of the event (YouTube) and HERE for a digital copy of the event flyer (PNG)
May 22, 2024: Steve Babson, The Great Fear, Then and Now: Dave Miller Faced HUAC in His Time, As We Now Face the Threat to Democracy in Ours
Dr. Steve Babson is a retired labor educator and union activist. He received his doctorate in United States History in 1989 from Wayne State. He worked at Wayne State from 1983 to 2006, both as an instructor and program coordinator for education and research, in the field of labor studies out of the now defunct College of Urban Labor and Metropolitan Affairs (CULMA). Dr. Steve Babson also served for many years as an officer of Local 6075 of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-AFT), representing faculty and academic staff at the University. He is the author of books like The Unfinished Struggle: Turning Points in American Labor, Working Detroit: The Making of a Union Town, and most recently, Forgotten Populists: When Farmers Turned Left to Save Democracy.
Click HERE for a link to an online recording of the event (YouTube) and HERE for a digital copy of the event flyer (PNG)
May 6, 2024: Labor@Wayne First Annual Labor Education Workshop
Labor education, both in academic courses and in non-credit courses, is part of what we do as Labor Scholars and Teachers. Labor@Wayne and the Fraser Center reaffirmed these commitments on May 6th when they held the first one-day workshop on labor education to make these connections. It included sessions led by the WSU Office of Teaching and Learning (OTL) but also incorporated other labor educators from around the country, with whom we discussed the state, role, and impact of labor education at this time of labor change and labor mobilization. Individual panel sessions included "Canvas Basics: Creating and Designing Content," "Motivating Students to Succeed by Creating an Inclusive Syllabus," and "Seven Communication Strategies to Engage Students Online," among other noteworthy sessions.
Click HERE for a digital copy of the event flyer (PNG)
April 4, 2024: Margot Canaday, Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America
Dr. Margot Canaday, Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University, discussed her new book, Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America, on April 4th, 2024. Queer Career has been recently awarded both the Hagley Prize in Business History and the Labor and Working-Class History Association's (LAWCHA's) Philip Taft Labor History Award. Margot Canaday's first book, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America, explores state opposition to homosexuality and queer identity across more than the past 100 years. Dr. Canaday's talk took place on April 4th from 11:00AM to 12:30PM. The event was sponsored by Labor@Wayne, the Fraser Center for Workplace Issues, the Walter Reuther Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, the Department of History, and the Center for Gender and Sexuality.
Click HERE for a link to an online recording of the event (YouTube) and HERE for a digital copy of the event flyer (PNG)
March 29, 2024: Notes Toward a Global Labor History of Detroit
Distinguished professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in US History, UCLA, Dr. Robin DG Kelley gave a much anticipated talk in the Bernath Auditorium, located in Wayne State's Undergraduate Library (UGL). Robin DG Kelley is a scholar of African American music, culture, and history who has published on topics ranging from labor history to jazz and surrealism. His books include Race Rebels, Freedom Dreams, Thelonious Monk, and Africa Speaks, America Answers. Dr. Kelley's talk, which addressed crucial historical and contemporary issues, took place on March 29th from 3:00PM to 5:00PM. The event was sponsored by Labor@Wayne, Wayne State's Department of African American Studies, Department of English, and the Center for Gender and Sexuality.
Click HERE for a digital copy of the event flyer (PNG)
March 21, 2024: Labor Spring: Higher Ed, Union Revival, and Labor History at a Crossroads
Dr. Joseph A. McCartin, Georgetown University, gave Labor@Wayne's returning Irving Bluestone Lectureship on Workplace Issues the day after Wayne State's Labor Spring Teach-In. As Director of Georgetown's Kalmanovitz Initiative on Labor and the Working Poor, Dr. McCartin has worked tirelessly to coordinate Labor Spring teach-ins across the United States and internationally. This work is in addition to his scholarship on US labor, social, and political history. Dr. McCartin's talk was held in the Community Room of Wayne State's Undergraduate Library (UGL) on March 21st from 4:00PM to 6:00PM. The event was sponsored by Labor@Wayne, Higher Ed Labor United (HELU), the Reuther Archives, Wayne State's Department of History, and the Fraser Center for Workplace Issues.
Click HERE for a digital copy of the event flyer (PNG)
March 20, 2024: WSU Second Annual Labor Spring Teach-In
Wayne State University hosted its second annual Labor Spring Teach-In starting on March 20th at the Student Center (Hilberry E/F), going from Noon to 4:00PM. The first day of Labor Spring was organized into separate topics-based panels for students, staff, faculty, and other community members to learn more about the labor movement and labor activism's role in safeguarding our democratic institutions. The panel topics ranged from "What is a Union?" and "What Rights are Workers' Rights" to "Unions and Environmental Justice" and "Unions and Human Rights." Panel participants joined the teach-in from a variety of organizations and departments like Jobs with Justice, the Department of Labor Wages and Hours Division, the Graduate Employees' Organizing Committee (GEOC), the Wayne Academic Union, Pride at Work Michigan, and more.
Click HERE for a digital copy of the event flyer (PNG)
February 23, 2024: Essential Workers: Public Employment and the Dignity of Labor
Dr. William P. Jones, University of Minnesota, gave the Fraser Center's second Fraser Center Lecture on the history of Essential Workers, their longstanding ties to practices of Public Employment, and questions about the workers' rights to dignity in the wake of pandemics and other disasters. Dr. Jones' Fraser Center Lecture was held on February 23rd in the Student Center (Hilberry D) from 11:00AM to 1:00PM. The event was sponsored by Labor@Wayne, The Fraser Center for Workplace Issues, the Reuther Archives, Wayne State University Department of African American Studies, and the WSU Crockett-Lumumba Scholars.
Click HERE for a digital copy of the event flyer (PNG)
February 22, 2024: Sterling Heights Library Lecture Series
Jamie McQuaid, from Wayne State University's Labor@Wayne, gave a guest lecture at the Sterling Heights Public Library on his recent dissertation, "This Union Cause: The Queer History of the United Auto Workers, 1935-2000." The event was held on February 22nd at 6:00PM.
January 22, 2024: UC on Strike: Preserving Negotiation and Strike Success in Higher Education
Panelists Caroline Luce (UCLA), Monica Geraffo (UAW-UCLA), Gavin Strassel (UAW Archives), and Heeba Hartit (GSR UC Labor Center) joined the Fraser Center for Workplace Issues to discuss the recent strike involving more than 48,000 graduate workers, post-docs, and academic researchers at the UC system in November 2022. This talk, which was held at the Reuther Archives on January 22, 2024 at 4:00PM, brought the return on the Fraser Center Lecture Series for 2024. The event was sponsored by the Fraser Center, Labor@Wayne, Higher Ed Labor United (HELU), and the Reuther Archives.
Click HERE for a digital copy of the event flyer (PNG)
December 15, 2023: WDI Alumni Association Open House
The open house was for the AFL-CIO's Workforce Development Institute and doubled as a reception for alums interested in Labor@Wayne's Employment and Labor Relations Programs. The event was on December 15, 2023, and went from 5:30PM to 8:30PM. It was held in the Walter Reuther Library Atrium. Workforce Development Institute with Henrietta Hadley and Colleen Sullivan.