Test: Group from Scratch

OVERVIEW

The labor movement is at a watershed moment as economic, technological, demographic and legal forces are combining to create the conditions for fundamental change. The labor movement needs to prepare for disruptive change – change that will markedly alter the landscape of players, expectations, and possibilities in workers’ rights organizing. The capacity to anticipate, plan for, and address disruptive change is requisite to the future viability and success of any organization. Given the magnitude of this moment, the Labor and Worklife Program is working with the National Education Association (NEA) to seize this opportunity as an occasion for growth and evolution by fundamentally rethinking the nature and operations of unions. The key is to transform, rather than reform, the institution.

Through the Labor Organization Innovation (LOI) Initiative, CLJE and the NEA are assembling a cross-disciplinary team of union leaders, advocates, academics, educators, policy leaders, and researchers to bring creativity, risk-taking, and innovation to develop a blueprint for the next generation of worker organizations. Leveraging learnings from educators’ movements, teachers’ unions, other kinds of worker organizations, businesses facing disruptive change, and social movements, the LOI Initiative will explore how workers – whether formally or informally organized – can work in concert to reach shared goals and continue to support educators.