Unionizing the Ivory Tower: Cornell Workers’ Fifteen-Year Fight for Justice and a Living Wage
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Overview
This virtual webinar will include a brief reading and spirited discussion about Unionizing the Ivory Tower with the book’s author, Al Davidoff. This discussion is particularly relevant as Cornell’s graduate workers have recently unionized.
Al Davidoff has been a valued member of our extended ILR community for many decades. He played a critical role in helping us establish our Union Leadership Institute (ULI) over twenty years ago and our National Labor Leadership Initiative (NLLI) ten years ago.
Al is an ILR graduate and was a student leader who became a custodian, a labor organizer, and the Cornell union's first president. With passion, sensitivity, and wit, he tells the extraordinary story of how these Cornell workers unionized our university.
His memoir reveals how they took on Cornell – the dominant power in Ithaca – and built a strong organization that waged multiple strikes and campaigns for livable wages and worker dignity. Their strategies and tactics were creative and feisty, founded on worker participation and ownership.
The union's commitment to fairness, equity, and economic justice also engaged these workers – primarily rural, white, and conservative – at the intersections of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Davidoff's story demonstrates how a fighting union can activate today's working class to oppose anti-democratic and white supremacist forces.
ILR Internal Event Only
