2023 Best Book Related to Labor Education

Authors Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta were presented with the 2023 Best Book Related to Labor Education on June 15, 2023. The UALE Book Award recognizes a book published during the previous 2-year period that is especially valuable for labor education. It is for a book that represents responsible scholarship, new ideas, creative thinking, and intellectual contribution to the labor movement, the broader workers’ movement, labor economics, labor history, politics, or culture.

Aspen Institute Book Talk - The Future We Need: Organizing For A Better Democracy In The 21st Century

“We are thrilled to have Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta join us for a timely discussion about their book, The Future We Need: Organizing for a Better Democracy in the Twenty-First Century. Weaving together stories of real working people, the pair brings a novel perspective to building worker power and what labor organizing could look like in the future, suggesting ways to evolve collective bargaining to match the needs of modern people — not only changing their wages and working conditions, but being able to govern over more aspects of their lives.” (more)

A Great Transformation

“THE UNITED STATES IS in a golden age of unionizing: Workers ranging from Starbucks baristas to magazine editors are uniting to demand better conditions on the job. Labor expert Sarita Gupta ’96, vice president of U.S. programs at the Ford Foundation, captures this moment. Her new book, “The Future We Need: Organizing for a Better Democracy in the Twenty-First Century,” offers a vivid, humanistic roadmap for modern unions.” (more)

Lender Center Brings Labor Movement Leaders to Campus to Discuss the Fight for Workers’ Rights

“The evening culminated with a book talk with keynote speaker Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs With Justice and co-author of the recently released “The Future We Need: Organizing for a Better Democracy in the Twenty-First Century,” with Sarita Gupta. Smiley (and all three panelists) noted the flaws in current U.S. labor law; the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which is rife with exclusions and loopholes; and how its oversight agency, the National Labor Relations Board, is understaffed and underfunded.” (more)

ALIGN Movement Builders Award

“Sarita Gupta and Erica Smiley, authors of The Future We Need, a new book that envisions the future of labor organizing” (more)

The Rise of the Gig Economy

“This article was excerpted from The Future We Need: Organizing for a Better Democracy in the Twenty-First Century by Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs With Justice, and Sarita Gupta, in her personal capacity as a longtime labor rights organizer and advocate. Copyright (c) 2022 by Cornell University. Used by permission of the publisher, Cornell University Press. (more)

‘The Future We Need’ examines labor organization and the impending fate of the modern workforce

“Co-authored by Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta, “The Future We Need: Organizing for A Better Democracy in the Twenty-First Century” is a holistic exploration of labor organization and workers’ power. The book, which details the experiences of real-life members of the workforce, stresses the intrinsic strength of achieving autonomy over one’s own labor practices.” (more)

Collective Bargaining for the Workplace and Democracy

“In this excerpt, Rubynell Walker-Barbee, a Black woman impacted when unemployment benefits were suddenly denied to school workers in Georgia, shares her story. She and her fellow service workers had to cope with a real-life economic nightmare. But they persisted and not only organized a union, but rolled back unfair legislation.” (more)

New book profiles labor organizers, including former Morehouse worker

“Walker-Barbee’s story, which also includes a successful fight for unemployment pay, is included in a new book, called The Future We Need: Organizing for a Better Democracy in the Twenty-First Century. Co-author Erica Smiley says the book is meant to change the perception of union workers.” (more)

'This is our time’: How women are taking over the labor movement

“Taken in the broader context of the rise of the #MeToo movement, the dismantling of care and the ping ponging value of the essential workforce, the reasons for organizing are more gendered now, said Sarita Gupta, co-author of The Future We Need: Organizing for Democracy in the Twenty-First Century.” (more)

The Great Awakening: Redefining Work, Values, and Purpose

“In a healthy democracy, everyday people find power in their collective voice and actions. Smiley and Gupta highlight such collective action in their forthcoming book, The Future We Need: Organizing for a Better Democracy for the Twenty-First Century, pointing out the various contexts and strategies in and through which working people have won better work conditions and more power and autonomy in the workplace.” (more)

Three Paths Forward for Labor after Amazon

“Many visions for new models of collective bargaining have emerged among the different organizing efforts of Amazon workers. Stepping into this moment of hope, this piece will draw on the conceptual framework that Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta laid out in their recently published book.” (more)

‘This is our time’: How women are taking over the labor movement

“The pandemic has created an opportunity for new movements in industries that haven’t organized before — movements also led by women.” (more)

Celebrating The Future We Need With a Few of our Closest Friends

“On May 2, 2022, the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice hosted some of Jobs With Justice’s closest movement friends and allies for a convening celebrating the launch of Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta’s new book.” (more)

US Soccer Deal Bolsters Equal Pay Push in Collective Bargaining

“The agreements are emblematic of the new way employee unions are approaching bargaining, said Sarita Gupta, vice president of U.S. programs at the Ford Foundation and co-author of the book The Future We Need, about using CBAs to push policy priorities.” (more)

Why unions are growing and shrinking at the same time

“Campaigns like Fight for $15 and a Union, the Workers Defense Project, and the Nail Salon Minimum Standards Council Act are attempting to get better standards, pay, and benefits for different segments of workers around the country. The incremental benefits such programs have gotten help raise the floor for all workers, and provide a better platform from which to unionize, according to Sarita Gupta.” (more)

Smiley on the Rick Smith Show

By working people. For working people. (Starts at 1:00:003)

Sarita on the Rick Smith Show

By working people. For working people. (Starts at 1:00:004)

‘The Future We Need’: A new book by Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta

“A wave of union organizing drives across the U.S. includes Amazon warehouse workers, coffee baristas, university graduate students and faculty, grocery store workers, nurses, restaurant workers, and food processing workers. Labor militancy has seen a strike wave through the closing months of 2021 and continuing into 2022.” (more)

40% of women in the U.S. make under $15/hour: ‘Disgusting,’ says expert, but ‘certainly not surprising’

“That so many women make such low wages is ‘disgusting,’ says Erica Smiley, executive director of workers’ rights organization Jobs With Justice and co-author of the forthcoming book The Future We Need.

‘But,’ she adds, ‘it’s certainly not surprising.’” (more)

Unions are making their biggest comeback since the ’60s. Here’s how workers are winning, according to 2 longtime labor organizers

“In their new book from Cornell University Press, labor organizers Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta discuss how workers are organizing in and out of traditional union contexts—and how they’re winning better working conditions.” (more)

What if the future of work is exactly the same?

“For many, the gains in worker pay and power during the pandemic are fading fast — if they even saw them at all.” (more)

Democracy needs you — not just at the polls, but at work

“This spring, we find ourselves in precarious waters.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has exposed deep cracks in the foundation of our democracy. Our economy remains deeply unequal, with billionaires profiting off the pandemic while workers struggle to keep up with inflation.

So now more than ever, we need to deepen our democracy — not just in the voting booth, but on the shop floor, too.” (more)

Smiley and Sarita on the Nomiki Show

Catch Smiley and Sarita's appearance on the Nomiki Show's "Femme Friday: Endangering Women | Organizing a Better Democracy | Amazon Labor Union!"

New book explores the future of collective bargaining

“Gupta and Smiley call on workers to recognize they have power. ‘They’ve always had it, the pandemic only exposed that they played an essential role in the economy. It’s not like it made them essential. And so now acting on that they can make different decisions and different choices about the role they want to want to play in identifying solutions for our shared future and our shared prosperity.’” (more)

Harmony of Interest Book Talks

“The Harmony of Interest Book Talk series interviews authors about their work while exploring ideas that positively shape our world.

In The Future We Need, Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta bring a novel perspective to building worker power and what labor organizing could look like in the future, suggesting ways to evolve collective bargaining to match the needs of modern people—not only changing their wages and working conditions, but being able to govern over more aspects of their lives.” (more)

The pandemic changed how we work. But are those practices here to stay?

“The American working world has been flipped upside down. Since 2020, many employees have adapted to working from home, managing hybrid schedules and countless remote meetings. But as we look to a future with, hopefully, fewer pandemic disruptions, what temporary work practices will become permanent? And what can we expect for the future of work?” (more)

The Future We Need: Economic Democracy

“Building a more powerful people’s movement for economic democracy will require the spread of a more expansive view of democracy, one that moves past individual rights and into the realm of shared responsibilities.” (more)

Your Rights At Work

DC’s call-in show about worker rights: those you have, those you don’t, how to get them and how to use them. Broadcast on WPFW 89.3FM

The Future We Need: Organizing for a Better Democracy in the Twenty-First Century

“In their new book, “The Future We Need: Organizing for a Better Democracy in the Twenty-First Century,” authors Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta argue that collective bargaining can be used to help improve work, help address discrimination, and improve the health of our democracy. Smiley, executive director of Jobs With Justice, and Gupta, the Ford Foundation’s vice president of US programs, “bring a novel perspective to building worker power and what labor organizing could look like in the future, suggesting ways to evolve collective bargaining to match the needs of modern people—not only changing their wages and working conditions, but being able to govern more aspects of their lives.” (more)