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Roosevelt House on Labor - The Best of Roosevelt House — Online
May 4, 2020 - May 31, 2020
We are pleased to continue encore online presentations of Roosevelt House public programming—to inform and inspire us during these challenging days.
In recent years, Roosevelt House has presented dozens of extraordinary, in-person talks and conversations with public policy and human rights experts, historians, writers, and leaders in business, culture, and government.
Now, recognizing that many of our members and supporters yearn to continue their close connection to our agenda of civic engagement, we are pleased to offer you the opportunity to re-examine programs you may have attended in the past, or to see such events for the first time.
ROOSEVELT HOUSE ON LABOR
As the number of Americans applying for unemployment continues to soar during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, we offer a series of programs from the Roosevelt House archive that look at issues related to labor. The first two of these programs are part of the annual David Dubinsky Labor Lecture series, named in memory of the legendary American labor leader (1892-1982) who served for decades as president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU)—and was a major political force from the New Deal era to the New Frontier. Roosevelt House is grateful to the Dubinsky Family, and to Mr. Dubinsky’s granddaughter Ryna Appleton Segal, for generously sponsoring this series on David Dubinsky’s legacy and the future of the labor movement in the U.S.
The first, the inaugural David Dubinsky lecture from September 2018, features one of the most outspoken and influential labor leaders of our time, Randi Weingarten, president since 2008 of the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers and former president, for 12 years, of the United Federation of Teachers, in conversation with award-winning journalist and former New York Times labor and workplace correspondent Steven Greenhouse. In it they discuss the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Janus v. AFSCME and how the ruling prohibits public sector unions from requiring non-members to contribute to the cost of representing them, jeopardizing the ability of organized labor to act for and empower working people.
The next program, the second annual David Dubinsky lecture from October 2019, includes, again, Steven Greenhouse, this time in discussion with ProPublica reporter on trade and the economy Lydia DePillis about Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor, praised in the New York Times as “a page-turning book that spans a century of worker strikes, without overcondensing or oversimplifying, and with plausible suggestions for the future.” In this discussion, Greenhouse offers an in-depth look at the story of working men and women in America, the challenges they face, and how they can be re-empowered.
The third program, from March 2014, is a panel discussion on the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire and its effect on labor laws and workplace safety in the U.S. as well as the impact of a 2012 factory fire in Bangladesh on the push for similar reforms in the developing world. Panelists include professor, labor historian, and author Alice Kessler-Harris; author, union representative, and Interim Associate Director of Worker Education at CUNY’s Murphy Institute Dan Katz; Executive Director of the International Labor Rights Forum Judy Gearhart; and professor, cultural anthropologist, and consultant for UNDP, UNICEF and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Dhaka Dina Siddiqi. The panel was organized by former Human Rights Program Director Lawrence Moss, and professors Eduardo Contreras and Donna Haverty-Stacke, who also moderated it.
Please tune in below:
Join us—this week and in the weeks to come—as we present The Best of Roosevelt House.
