8:30am-9:00am

Registration and Breakfast

9:00-9:15am

Welcoming Remarks

• Sharon Block, Executive Director, Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School
• Judy Scott, James and Hoffman, P.C.

9:15-9:45am

Keynote - Policy as Political Weapon: Conservative Advocacy and the Demobilization of the American Labor Movement

• Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

9:45-11:00am

Panel One: Facilitating Choice of Worker Organization

Under current law, choosing representation (without an employer’s acquiescence) is extremely cumbersome – it requires the intervention of a government agency, guarantees employers a voice in the campaign, and sets significant numerical hurdles to starting the process and even higher hurdles to winning any representation. On this panel, we will debate how workers should decide whether to be represented by a worker organization. Among the ideas we will explore are: whether workplaces should be unionized by default, whether elections should be required in all workplaces, and how formal the choice of representation should be.

Moderator: Judy Scott, James and Hoffman, P.C.

• David Doorey, Associate Professor, Director, Osgoode Hall Law School, LLM Labor & Employment Law (PDP), York University
• Brishen Rogers, Associate Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law
• Gwynne Wilcox, Partner, Levy Ratner P.C. & Counsel, SEIU 1199
• Emily Stewart Organizing Director, Midwest Initiatives, SEIU

11:00am-11:15am

Break

11:15am-12:30pm

Panel Two: Revenue Generation to Sustain Powerful Worker Organizations

As our panelist Shayna Strom has written, worker organizations that cannot simply rely on mandated membership dues or fees have a “business model problem”. Among the ideas we will explore for how workers can most effectively sustain organizations are: whether worker organizations should be permitted to charge fees for representation activities, whether they should be able to collect fees directly from employers, whether they should rely on revenue derived from providing non-representation services to workers, and whether they should charge for services provided to employers or government.

Moderator: Karla Walter, Director, Employment Policy, Center for American Progress

• Bo Delp, Better Builder and Policy Director, Workers Defense Project

• Nicole Berner, General Counsel, SEIU
• Jess Kutch, Co-founder & Co-director, coworker.org
• Shayna Strom, National Advocacy Director and Deputy Political Director, ACLU & Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation

12:30pm-1:00pm

Lunch Break

1:00pm-1:15pm

Looking at Global Modals of Sustainable Revenue Generation and Workers’ Choice

• Lance Compa, Senior Lecturer, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University

1:15pm-3:15pm

Working Groups on Revenue Generation

Working Groups on Facilitating Choice

3:15-3:15pm

Closing Remarks

• Benjamin Sachs, Kestnbaum Professor of Labor and Industry and Faculty Co-Director, Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School