Mission
Our Goals and Theses
What we do
The Center for Work and Democracy was founded in 2019 to connect university knowledge production to the challenges facing working people in our increasingly plutocratic society. Inequality has reached historically unprecedented extremes and that is undermining avenues for social mobility, driving growing political extremism, and producing an expansion of the carceral apparatus at the expense of social solidarity and collective care. It is the conviction of the Center that the renewal of social solidarity and democracy will be driven by working people. Therefore, rebuilding the power and voice of working people will be necessary to address these issues and others. Addressing climate change, for example, is unlikely to happen without a renewal of social solidarity and democracy. The mission of the Center is to rebuild the power and voice of working people and to facilitate a more inclusive polity, economy, and civil society.
The Center for Work and Democracy always operates with a few theses in mind:
Representation
Working people have been marginalized in our polity. Both political parties rely on working- and middle-class support, but both mostly reflect the policy priorities of businesses and the wealthy. This has destabilized American politics to the point that our democratic institutions are themselves threatened and will only be corrected when working people again have institutions and organizations that represent them.
Empowerment
Working people need new organizations to amplify their voices and power. Rebuilding the labor movement is essential for this, but so is imagining and building new organizations, including community unions, political organizations, and social movements. Working people have taken the lead in activism around immigrant rights, police abolition, housing rights and environmental justice. All of these organizing and protest efforts are of interest to the Center for Work and Democracy.
Democratizing the economy
For democracy to survive it is necessary for the economy to be democratized as well. This can happen through unions which give workers a voice on the job, but it can also happen through organizations like cooperatives and worker associations, or through policy interventions like the creation of alternative currencies and increased regulation of monopolistic firms.
Building a better future
The Center acts on these theses through our research, our teaching, and our collaborations with unions, labor centers, movement spaces, and civil society organizations. We endeavor to ensure that the voices of working people, activists, organizers, and leaders are represented in the governance of the Center, in our day-to-day activities, and in our research.
(Photo courtesy of United Healthcare Workers West)