As summer draws to an end, Labor Day is more than an opportunity for one last weekend at the beach. The federal holiday commemorates the American labor movement, and the centuries-old struggle for workers’ rights.

And Maryland is home to the second-largest archive of labor history in the United States, located in the University Libraries at University of Maryland, College Park.

Benjamin Blake, Social Justice and Labor Archivist in the University Libraries, joins us to discuss labor history and connecting his work in the archives to today's social movement driving for change. Blake is also one of the faculty members supporting unionization of their own workplace.

The push for union representation continues in a range of professions and industries, from carmakers to Starbucks baristas to healthcare workers. Efforts to unionize also persist in the ivory towers of U.S. universities and colleges.

While faculty in the University System of Maryland, Morgan State and St. Mary’s College do not have the right to collective bargaining, faculty and graduate assistants across the state have been organizing to exert more say in their working conditions.

Two academic workers involved in organizing efforts on campuses in Maryland join us. Jared Ball is a professor of Communication and Africana Studies at Morgan State University. He also founded Black Power Media and hosts the podcast ‘iMIXWHATiLIKE!’ We are also joined by Andrew Eneim, a Ph.d candidate in biophysics and physical chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. There, he helped organize the ‘Teachers and Researchers United’ union.

(Image courtesy: University of Maryland University Libraries.)

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