Stopping Sexual Harassment in the Empire State: Past, Present, and a Possible Future

This report maps current patterns of workplace sexual harassment and their impact in New York State. It also provides a broader frame for understanding how efforts to confront sexual and gender-based harassment and assault have evolved over time, and charts possible directions for future organizing, policy, and research in New York and beyond. The findings presented here are drawn from the 2018 Empire State Poll, an annual statewide survey of 800 New Yorkers conducted by the Cornell Survey Research Institute. Questions added to the survey reflecting existing legal definitions of workplace sexual harassment reveal the following: 10.9 percent of New York residents have experienced quid pro quo workplace sexual harassment, and 21.9 percent have experienced workplace sexual harassment that created a hostile work environment; 31.1 percent of women and 18.9 percent of men have experienced at least one of these forms of harassment. 13.9 percent of people of color and people of Hispanic origin have experienced quid pro quo workplace sexual harassment, as opposed to 8.5 percent of non-Hispanic whites. 38.9 percent of those experiencing at least one form of workplace sexual harassment say it impacted their work or careers; 48.9 percent who experienced quid pro quo harassment reported such an impact. 83.4 percent of New York residents think their leaders should do more to address workplace sexual harassment. There is notable variation by politics and ideology, but regardless of worldview, strong majorities think leaders should do more. In addition to sharing the survey findings, the report discusses experiences and responses of survivors and how they are shaped by different identities and relations of power. It highlights black women’s leadership in propelling wide-reaching shifts in law and culture; efforts initiated by diverse survivors to effect change in specific industries; and culture change work engaging men and women as allies

Mass infection is not an option: we must do more to protect our young.

Funder: Medical Research CouncilFunder: Wellcome Trus

Little perpetrators, witness-bearers and the young and the brave: towards a post-transitional aesthetics

The aesthetic choices characterizing work produced during the transition to democracy have been well documented. We are currently well into the second decade after the 1994 election - what then of the period referred to as the 'second transition'? Have trends consolidated, hardened, shifted, or have new 'post-transitional' trends emerged? What can be expected of the future 'born free' generation of writers and readers, since terms such as restlessness, dissonance and disjuncture are frequently used to describe the experience of constitutional democracy as it co-exists with the emerging new apartheid of poverty? Furthermore, what value is there in identifying post-transitional aesthetic trends?DHE

Negotiating justice and possibility: alternative labor organizing in New York

Amid broad consensus about the urgency of transforming and revitalizing the US labor movement, alternative labor organizations such as worker centers have emerged as community-based, experimental organizations aiming to address some of the perceived gaps and failures of the mainstream movement. The structures and ideological orientation of worker centers challenge the labor movement’s decades-long entrenchment of top-down bureaucracy and its historical exclusion of people of color, women, and immigrants—the very people that worker centers organize. This dissertation uses ethnography and life histories to examine the possibilities and constraints of alternative labor organizing with a radical vision of social change, exploring labor campaigns carried out by the Brooklyn Worker Center and a diverse group of bakery workers in New York. BWC sought to overcome both the limitations of worker centers in building power and the weaknesses of the mainstream labor movement by pursuing a model based on 'solidarity unionism', a current-day form of syndicalism that centers the principles of solidarity, direct action, and worker leadership within its long-term vision of worker control. Through an affiliation with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), BWC was seeking to unionize workers without using elections or aiming for contracts, but instead relying on worker solidarity and ongoing direct action. Documenting the struggle to manifest this radical vision within the reality of our existing political economic terrain, this study reveals a disjuncture between the Brooklyn Worker Center's vision and its practice, particularly evident in the organization's struggle to foster sustained worker participation in its campaigns and cultivate an active, growing, and militant organization of workers on the shop floor. I argue that this discrepancy between vision and practice was caused by the organization underestimating the challenges of transitioning from an advocacy-centered model to a model rooted in sustained workplace organizing. This transition is traced across multiple scales of analysis in the dissertation, weaving between BWC’s organizational vision and strategies and the experiences of the bakery workers both inside and beyond the workplace. Beginning with a framework that traces the structural formation of the working class along hierarchies of labor, the analysis moves to workers' subjective experiences of these hierarchies and imagined possibilities for change, to the moral economy of the shop floor at an industrial bakery. I explore how BWC's organizing strategies strove to help workers prefigure the union through building 'structures of solidarity', seeking to activate workers' sense of justice and to expand their sense of what was possible; meanwhile, the employer sought to reassert maternalism and diminish imagined possibilities. Yet as these workers faced the triple threat of limited structural bargaining power, divisions in the workplace and precarity beyond the workplace, BWC was unable to position the union as a viable source of justice and security. Ultimately, the organization’s ambitious, radical vision of worker power was not matched with sufficient organizing capacity to overcome the challenges and divisions; while the organization succeeded in leveraging external sources of power to win certain demands, the cultivation of worker solidarity and internal power faltered. This case study speaks to the inherent challenges of organizing marginalized workers, and draws our attention to the need to attend to the cultivation of workers' bargaining power and their ‘internal power’—a balance far more difficult to achieve in practice than in principle.</p

Unpaid Care Work and Its Impact on New Yorkers’ Paid Employment

The widening gulf between the vast need for care in our society and the limited accessibility of care has led us into a “crisis of care.” While the need for care is universal, care work has been relegated to the status of a private concern since the rise of capitalist industrialization. As the increasingly sharp divisions between the public realm of the market and the private realm of the home led to more fixed and gendered divisions between productive labor (“men’s work”) and reproductive labor (“women’s work”), the labor of caring—for children, for elders, for those with illness or disability—was devalued, whether unpaid or paid. This pattern has been reinforced by neoliberal restructuring of the economy and public services, even amid shifts in labor market participation and changes in gendered norms of care work in the family. To explore current patterns of unpaid caregiving and its impact on New Yorkers’ paid employment, this policy brief shares relevant findings from the 2022 Empire State Poll, carried out by the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR)

Unvarnished: Precarity and Poor Working Conditions for Nail Salon Workers in New York State

This report maps out the contours of New York State’s nail salon industry and workforce and examines labor conditions in the industry and their impact on workers’ lives, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and recent legislation regulating the industry. The research conducted for this report included analysis of government data on the industry; focus groups with nail salon workers conducted in four languages; and a statewide survey of nail salons. The research design was shaped by the principles of participatory research. Our analysis indicates that New York has the highest concentration of nail technicians in the nation, with the most common primary languages of these workers being Chinese (39%), Spanish (19%), and Vietnamese (14%). The vast majority (82%) of nail salons in New York are microbusinesses with five or fewer nail technicians, and the average service prices are markedly lower than the nationwide average. New legislation and regulations have been an important step toward lifting standards in the industry, but our research suggests that nail salon workers in New York earn low wages and have inadequate workplace benefits. With a workforce predominantly made up of immigrant women of color who often endure economic insecurity and have limited alternative job opportunities, our research found that this precarity heightened fears of retaliation, seriously undermining workers’ willingness to speak out about violations. Our research reveals substantial employer noncompliance with new laws and regulations and also points to unequal pay, treatment, and working conditions for workers of different ethnic backgrounds. Access to training and awareness of workers’ rights appeared to make workers feel more empowered to speak out. The report recommendations include: use a sectoral approach to raise standards comprehensively across the industry; center worker voice and organizing in strategies to lift and enforce industry standards, and support worker organizations’ critical role in bolstering worker voice and agency; strengthen enforcement capacity; ensure diverse representation of the workforce in any such initiatives; and make training more accessible and relevant for nail salon workers

Diminishing New York State's Public Mental Healthcare Sector: The Impact of Austerity and Privatization on Wages and Employment

[Excerpt] This report explores the effects that privatization and austerity have had on mental healthcare capacity in New York State and the employment and wages of public sector mental health workers. Our research finds that both the public sector mental healthcare workforce and the state’s mental healthcare capacity have decreased significantly between 1990 and 2021. The findings strongly suggest that ongoing contraction of the state’s public sector mental health workforce—and the concomitant privatization of mental health work—likely has had (and will potentially continue to create) disparate and negative impacts on mental health workers, their families, and their communities. These negative impacts disproportionately affect women, people of color, and working-class New Yorkers. The analysis strongly suggests that public sector mental health facilities in New York State create good, well-paying union jobs, at all skill levels, and for residents of all racial-ethnic backgrounds; all while more dedicated mental health capacity (e.g., specialized mental health providers and facilities) might mean fewer suicides, fewer instances of hospitalization due to self-harm, and an overall stronger state of mental health across New York

Sweeping Change: Building Survivor and Worker Leadership to Confront Sexual Harassment in the Janitorial Industry

This report documents experiences of workplace sexual harassment in the California janitorial industry, as well as the conditions that hinder reporting and impose silence. It also examines a survivor- and worker-led peer education approach for confronting workplace sexual harassment. The research conducted for this report incorporated elements of a communitybased participatory research model (CBPR) and included surveys of more than 700 janitorial workers; focus groups with 35 workers; a survey of 36 janitors who are promotoras and compadres (peer educators); and in-depth interviews with four worker leaders. In addition to showing that experiences of sexual harassment and assault are widespread among this workforce, analysis of the resulting data indicates that: 1) Sexual harassment has differential impact within this workforce. In particular, women janitors are more likely to experience unwanted sexual behavior than men; they are also much more likely to be targeted by supervisors and to switch jobs due to harassing behavior. 2) Silence around the issue is enforced by the behavior of supervisors, coworkers, and other actors, along with broader power dynamics and more diffuse elements of workplace culture. These conspire to create an environment in which those targeted report working in fear and grappling with trauma alone. 3) Many survivors do not trust existing channels for reporting and responding to sexual harassment. Building worker leadership and cultivating relationships of trust in confronting sexual harassment can help to break that silence and shift workplace practices and culture.WI_Sweeping_change.pdf: 3 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Stopping Sexual Harassment in the Empire State: Past, Present, and a Possible Future

This report maps current patterns of workplace sexual harassment and their impact in New York State. It also provides a broader frame for understanding how efforts to confront sexual and gender-based harassment and assault have evolved over time, and charts possible directions for future organizing, policy, and research in New York and beyond. The findings presented here are drawn from the 2018 Empire State Poll, an annual statewide survey of 800 New Yorkers conducted by the Cornell Survey Research Institute. Questions added to the survey reflecting existing legal definitions of workplace sexual harassment reveal the following: 10.9 percent of New York residents have experienced quid pro quo workplace sexual harassment, and 21.9 percent have experienced workplace sexual harassment that created a hostile work environment; 31.1 percent of women and 18.9 percent of men have experienced at least one of these forms of harassment. 13.9 percent of people of color and people of Hispanic origin have experienced quid pro quo workplace sexual harassment, as opposed to 8.5 percent of non-Hispanic whites. 38.9 percent of those experiencing at least one form of workplace sexual harassment say it impacted their work or careers; 48.9 percent who experienced quid pro quo harassment reported such an impact. 83.4 percent of New York residents think their leaders should do more to address workplace sexual harassment. There is notable variation by politics and ideology, but regardless of worldview, strong majorities think leaders should do more. In addition to sharing the survey findings, the report discusses experiences and responses of survivors and how they are shaped by different identities and relations of power. It highlights black women’s leadership in propelling wide-reaching shifts in law and culture; efforts initiated by diverse survivors to effect change in specific industries; and culture change work engaging men and women as allies.WI_Stopping_Sexual_Harassment.pdf: 615 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020