23 Facts About Jane McAlevey

Jane F McAlevey was an American union organizer, author, and political commentator.

Jane McAlevey was a Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, and a columnist at The Nation.

Jane McAlevey wrote four books about organizing and the essential role of workers and trade unions in reversing income inequality and building a stronger democracy: Raising Expectations and Raising Hell, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy, and with Abby Lawlor, Rules to Win By: Power and Participation in Union Negotiations.

Jane McAlevey began attending anti-nuclear protests on her own at age 13.

In 1984, while attending the State University of New York at Buffalo, Jane McAlevey was elected student body president.

Jane McAlevey went on to be elected president of the Student Association of the State University of New York, the 200,000-member statewide student union in New York's public university system.

Jane McAlevey was one of the "SUNY 6" organizers arrested for trespass; she and two others accepted 15-day sentences and went to prison rather than agree to refrain from protesting during a probationary period.

Jane McAlevey left the State University of New York at Buffalo before completing her undergraduate degree.

In 2010, at the urging of Frances Fox Piven, Jane McAlevey returned to university to pursue a PhD.

Jane McAlevey then moved to California to work out of David Brower's Earth Island Institute on a project aimed at educating the environmental movement in the United States about the ecological consequences of US military and economic policy in Central America.

Jane McAlevey served as co-director of EPOCA, the Environmental Project on Central America.

In 2009, Jane McAlevey was diagnosed with cancer and forced to take a break from her work to undergo treatment.

Jane McAlevey's studies completed, McAlevey returned to labor organizing, and continued to write, producing two more books, A Collective Bargain, and Rules to Win By with Abby Lawlor.

Jane McAlevey, an engaging speaker, reached global audiences when, starting in 2019, she led an intensive six-week online course, Organizing for Power, at the Berlin-based Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, a democratic socialist policy nonprofit.

In 2019, Jane McAlevey was named Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.

Jane McAlevey's whole-worker organizing model views workers and the community they live in as a whole: workers are part of the community, and community members engage in work.

Jane McAlevey was active in the public sphere, in American and international media.

Jane McAlevey contended that only workers have the power, through organization, to force significant change in the workplace and in society at large.

Jane McAlevey advocated for a complete restructuring of how a majority of labor unions today operate, including their approaches to leadership development, bargaining, allocation of resources, and relationship to politics.

Jane McAlevey describes the three common approaches to change: advocacy, mobilization, and organization.

Mobilization, which Jane McAlevey calls "shallow organizing", seeks to motivate like-minded people to act on their belief through actions such as demonstrations or voting.

In 2009, Jane McAlevey was diagnosed with early-stage ovarian cancer and underwent a year of intensive treatment.

Jane McAlevey died from multiple myeloma on July 7,2024, at the age of 59, at her cabin in Muir Beach, California.