Nannie Helen Burroughs: A Tower of Strength in the Labor World
For Black History Month, CIWO is lifting up Dr. Danielle T. Phillips-Cunningham's new book about Nannie Helen Burroughs, esteemed Black labor educator and leader.
Announcements
Please SAVE THE DATE: On May 9, 2025 at 2:00 pm ET, author Prentis Hemphill will join us virtually to discuss their new book What It Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World, a framework for healing from trauma on individual and collective levels in order to move our society towards justice. This event is co-hosted by CIWO and Transformative Leadership for Justice.
Marilyn Sneiderman's Retirement
The team of the Center for Innovation and Worker Organization (CIWO) would like to congratulate our former Director and founder, Marilyn Sneiderman, for ten years of extraordinary leadership and wish her the best in this new stage of her life. Happy retirement, Marilyn!
> Make a gift to CIWO to honor Marilyn
CIWO Team Transitions:
A message from Saumya, visiting Fulbright Scholar: Thank you to the incredible CIWO staff and Rutgers faculty who helped me design and carry out my research with women of color in retail, food service, and care & cleaning jobs in New Jersey. These are women in the most vulnerable circumstances with the fewest institutional safeguards – women of remarkable courage and wisdom. I believe the experiences shared by these women can contribute to the broader understanding of worker voice and make the literature more inclusive.
Congratulations to our colleague Ardra Manasi as she begins her new position as Senior Program Coordinator, Gender and Labor Justice at the International Labor Rights Forum. Ardra was the Global Program Manager at CIWO for the last year and was instrumental in the organization of a global strategy session held by CIWO and partners in Cape Town, South Africa, in concert with the 24th General Conference of International Federation of Workers’ Education Association (IFWEA) from December 6-8, 2023.
CIWO Celebrates AANHPI History: Past, Present and Future
CIWO celebrated Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Histories this past May 2024 by uplifting AANHPI Leadership within our movement – past, present and future. Catch this must watch event hosted by Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) featuring organizers May Chen and Katie Quan (photo below), discussing the 1982 garment workers strike and the founding of APALA. We also celebrate CIWO leaders at APALA such as President Ligaya Domingo (CIWO Racial Justice Fellow), National Executive Board members Kim Dinh (WE Innovate Labor Leadership Emerging Leader), Rateeluck Tarn Goelling (WE Innovate Labor Leadership Executive Leader) and Kasi Perreira (Director of Leadership and Organizational Change Programs, CIWO).
Announcement! CIWO Leadership Transition
Ten years ago, CIWO was founded at a time when many of us in the racial/gender/economic justice movements were searching for new ideas, direction, and strategy to address the devastating impact of 21st century racialized capitalism.
Under the leadership of Marilyn Sneiderman, CIWO has convened leaders and organizations to reveal points of alignment, sites of struggle, and opportunities for innovation across the movement. We are amazed at how far we have come in a decade – working with partners from across the movement to launch Build the Bench, Bargaining for the Common Good, WILL Empower, Innovation Seeding Transformation and so much more.
Announcing the new CIWO Advisory Committee!
On February 9th, 2024, CIWO convened our first Advisory Committee meeting via Zoom. The Advisory Committee will offer support with visioning the priorities, strategy, and programming for the next 10 years at CIWO. At the first meeting, the level of engagement was energizing and left us feeling inspired about all the ways that we can continue to commit to our movement. We look forward to continuing to engage the advisory council in the coming months.
CIWO Advisory Committee Members:
- Anna Branch, Senior Vice President for Equity, Rutgers University
- Brittney Cooper, Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Africana Studies, Rutgers University
- Cedric de Leon, Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Jen Disla, Co-Executive Director, Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice, CUNY
- Adrienne Eaton (Ex-Officio), Dean, Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations
- Kathleen Gaspard, Deputy Director, Institute for Policy Studies
- Marjona Jones, Director of Strategy & Programs, The LIFT Fund
- Neneki Lee, Deputy to the Secretary Treasurer, Service Employees International Union
- Darlene Lombos, President & Principal Officer, Greater Boston Labor Council
- Andrea Mercado, Executive Director, Florida Rising
- Liz Perlman, Executive Director, AFSCME 3299
- Danielle Phillips-Cunningham, Associate Professor, Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Rutgers University
- Kyle Serette, National Educational Campaign Manager, National Education Association
- Erica Smiley, Executive Director, Jobs with Justice
- Angeles Solis, Director of Worker Organizing, Make the Road New York
Announcements
Saumya Saumya, a Fulbright Visiting Scholar from the National University Delhi, joined CIWO to research women’s and gender studies, focusing on women workers, their positionality, and voice expression.
Kathleen Gaspard, Deputy Director of the Institute for Policy Studies has renewed her fellowship with CIWO Build the Bench. We are excited to have Kathleen’s continued guidance in supporting #2 leaders at worker centers and nonprofit organizations across the country!
Clara Mejía Orta, is working with Build the Bench on a visual identity project to better communicate the values of the program to our diverse network. Examples of her previous work include Labor of Love, the President’s Organizing Initiative at MLK Labor, AFL-CIO and WSLC Racial Equity and Policy Toolkit.
Clara is a fourth-year student in the History PhD program at Yale University. Originally from Mexico and currently living in East Los Angeles, her research examines the lives and lived experiences of Latinx, immigrant, and refugee meatpacking workers in the United States and their efforts to gain collective bargaining rights through labor unions. During the pandemic Clara began conducting oral histories from meatpacking workers and labor leaders to center and highlight their perspectives. Prior to her graduate studies, she was a labor organizer for the United Food and Commercial Workers in Los Angeles—organizing meatpacking plants, grocery stores, and cannabis businesses, to win or ratify their contracts.
Spirit & Solidarity
In mid-July, over 30 faith and labor leaders from 15 states and D.C. came together for a 2-day planning retreat at the Jewish Theological Seminary and Union Theological Seminary to relaunch a national organizing training program for seminary students and faith leaders. The group plans to relaunch the training under the new name “Spirit and Solidarity” next summer in Tennessee. The event was convened by the Interreligious Network for Worker Solidarity, Bargaining for the Common Good (including advisory committee member Francisco Garcia), the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization at Rutgers University, and the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt University.
Over the course of the retreat, participants discussed the current state of the timely, unique, and vital role of faith and labor partnerships to build power for workers. The group heard from faith and labor leaders from around the country about how they are breaking down silos and building transformative long-term partnerships between faith and labor groups. Participants heard from Abdirahman Muse from The AWOOD Center in Minneapolis, Pastor Rodney Wade from the Recovery For All Coalition and Vonda McDaniel from the Central Labor Council of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, who all shared stories of successful campaigns for the common good.
The palpable energy and enthusiasm of the cohort—many of whom had not previously met—demonstrated a clear need and desire for a new Spirit and Solidarity event. People were excited to connect with each other as they shared stories and expertise, and developed deep relationships in just two days. The group plans to expand their group to include an even more diverse set of leaders and organizations, and to continue meeting over the next year leading up to the summer 2024 training. Spirit and Solidarity Summer will not only educate participants about the worker justice landscape (unions, worker centers, and cooperatives, how they work, why they matter), train people on basic relational organizing skills like one-on-one conversations, coalition building, and congregational/community engagement, but also provide a deeper theological, political, and economic analysis that can sustain the work for the long-haul.
2023 – 2024 Executive Leaders Profiles
Our new executive cohort for the 2023-2024 year is HERE!!!
Check out our website to learn more about these leaders that will be coming together to drive labor leadership forward in innovative and unique ways.
> View the Executive Leaders Profiles
Inaugural BCG Strategy Retreat!
Last month, we hosted the very first BCG retreat for staff and organizers leading BCG campaigns and coalitions across the country. BCG organizers came together to plan, learn and strategize about how to seize the moment we are in to develop meaningful community labor-partnership, make bolder demands, and put it all into action. BCG staff members and organizers provide unions and community groups with training, research, and strategic engagement to develop and run BCG campaigns. If you are interested in getting involved, reach out to us!
It was great to sit with other state coordinators and learn from their unique experience and see the wide breadth of organizing work that is happening all over the country using this framework. - Dianne Enriquez, California Common Good
"The retreat really made clear to me the necessity of BCG in this moment of polarization in the U.S. I left feeling re-committed to using this framework to continue building the robust community-labor coalitions we need to win and using my role to build the capacity of local strategic researchers." - Gabby Noa Betancourt, ACRE
46th Women's Summer School Plenary on Gender-Based Violence in the Workplace (ILO C190) & CIWO's Transformative Global Leadership Program
July 13, 2023: The Transformative Global Leadership Program (TGLP), a joint initiative of the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization (CIWO) and Labor Research Service (LRS) in South Africa hosted a plenary session at the 46th United Association For Labor Education (UALE) Northeast Regional Women’s Summer School at Rutgers University. The session focused on what constitutes a “gendered” approach to organizing, using ILO Convention 190 as a case study. ILO Convention 190 (C190) is the first international treaty to address violence and harassment in the world of work, adopted in 2019.
The event titled “A Gendered Approach to Organizing: Introduction to ILO Convention 190” was attended by over 140+ participants from the Women’s Summer School. The plenary session introduced key definitions and features of C190 and discussed potential ways to implement (even before ratification by countries) through Collective Bargaining Agreements, and measures on Occupational Health and Safety. This was followed by the Global Team sharing insights and lessons learned with examples of organizing using C190 in sectors such as street vendors, mine workers, domestic workers, and other groups from various regions of the world, including from South Africa and Latin America. Following the plenary, the facilitation team met with the Summer School participants in groups to answer questions and strategize ways that C190 can be integrated and implemented in their local workplace settings.
Speakers and facilitators included:
- Nosipho Twala & Nina Benjamin (Labour Research Service-LRS), South Africa
- madeleine kennedy-macfoy (Gender at Work)
- Adriana Paz (International Domestic Workers Federation-IDWF)
- Teyo Saree Abraham (STOKE Collective), visual scribe who captured discussion in live illustration
- Sheri Davis, Ardra Manasi, Patricia Munoz, and MaryGrace DiMaria (CIWO)
