2538 Channing Way
Berkeley, CA 94720
USA
Only 11% of United States workers today are unionized. Unions under our labor law regime and economic system have become smaller for almost a half century. Thus wages have stagnated or declined for the 89% of U.S. workers who are now not in unions and, for the unionized, they have barely kept pace with inflation.
If greater union density improves wages and work life conditions for all workers: (1) how do we grow actually existing unions, and (2) how do we organize workers who are not unionized? The Oakland Livable Wage Assembly (“OLWA”) is an experiment towards some solutions. www.olwa.org https://www.facebook.com/groups/1568668586707336/
With now five years in Oakland of volunteer autonomous organizing experience based on and inspired by the Zapatista and Occupy models, I will both document OLWA’s two year history and situate our collective work in the relevant human sciences, labor economics/history, and community/labor organizing literatures. I welcome help with both recruiting more OLWA participants and a publication agenda. Written scholarly work product is to be determined. As a rank and file SEIU Local 1000 union shop steward, I thank my union for the meeting space for OLWA’s ongoing work.
The Bio:
John Hayakawa Torok is a participant in the Oakland Livable Wage Assembly and is an SEIU Local 1000 rank and file worksite shop steward at his State of California day job in San Francisco. After receiving a 1991 JD from the CUNY Law School he was a Rockefeller Humanities Fellow and then participated in the Critical Race Theory workshops. His 2008 Berkeley Ethnic Studies PhD dissertation sounds in immigration, legal and civil liberties history focusing on immigration policy enforcement in Cold War New York Chinatown. As an ISSI/CRSC Visiting Scholar, he will situate five years of labor and community organizing in Occupy Oakland, his union, and the Oakland Livable Wage Assembly in the relevant literatures.