More Participants
Sara Horowitz, who has deep family ties to traditional labor organizing, has resurrected and modernized a nineteenth century form of labor organizing—the mutual aid society—and updated it for today’s freelance workers. Through advocacy, education, and the provision of services (particularly health insurance), the Freelancers Union offers a path forward for workers who lack established identities and benefits derived from being employees of a particular firm.
Building New Supports For the New Workforce: The Role of Solidarity and New Labor Institutions
Panelists:
- Moderator: Sara Horowitz (Freelancers Union)
- Andrea Dehlendorf (Our Walmart)
- Yochai Benkler (Harvard)
- Palak Shah (Domestic Workers Alliance) (Tentative)
Description:
Both government institutions and the private sector have been charged with promoting social welfare. However, in the modern economy, neither has proven quite up to the task. In recent years, we’ve witnessed the breakdown of the New Deal-era social contract and its hard-won worker protections. At the same time, we’ve seen the ability of government to provide essential services wane, and the political power once afforded to unified labor give way to a staunch individualism.
Historically, labor unions and mutual aid organizations mobilized large worker factions to protect institutions that delivered sustainable benefits to their communities. Built on solidarity, these organizations could effectively leverage market and political power on behalf of their constituencies.
Today, as the workforce is diversified and peer networks transform social and market structures, we see new labor movements emerge to address workers’ needs, from Fight for $15 to the proliferation of new cooperative models.
This panel will examine the role labor institutions can play in providing social welfare to workers. Specifically, it will explore:
- Reimagining labor institutions in a networked society
- The role of solidarity in delivering social welfare
- The role government can play in supporting social purpose institutions (and what government must continue to do)