Day 1: screening of The Strike followed by fireside chat on incarcerated activism + solitary confinement in CA & NY
Day 2: academic research + practitioner perspectives on prison governance, activism + negotiated settlements
This in-person event is open to the Cornell community, including alumni.
On May 1-2, #CornellILR will host "Labor, Discipline, and the Carceral State," a conference exploring the contestations over labor and solitary confinement between incarcerated people and correctional officers within the prison, with special attention given to New York State.
Standard Communities is now among the largest affordable housing owners in the country, with more than 30,000 units across 22 states and more than 160 employees.
“Studying labor economics and industrial relations at Cornell, I first really grasped that the combination of work and housing really shapes everything else in a person's life,” Scott says. “A safe, stable home and job are the foundations everything else is built on. That idea has never left me.”
After graduating from #CornellILR, Scott Alter spent several years working in investment banking + real estate investment. Then the 2008 financial crisis happened. Instead of pivoting away from real estate, Scott decided to lean in, founding Standard Communities with a focus on affordable housing.
Disability Statistics Logo - map of united states with data lines in blue and orange across it.
🚨New Disability Statistics Features: 30,000+ New Places on DisabilityStatistics.org!
📅 Monday, May 11, 2026
⏰ 1:00–2:30 PM ET
Explore powerful new updates to DisabilityStatistics.org!
Don’t miss this chance to turn data into impact!
👉 Register Now: events.yangtaninstitute.org/e/11559/regi...
Full listing of 2026 #CornellILR Union Days events: events.cornell.edu/event/ilr-un...
Join #CornellILR for "Legalized Inequalities: Immigration & Race in the Low-Wage Workplace," a Union Days book talk + discussion on low-wage work, inequality and the policies shaping today’s labor landscape.
🗓️ April 24, 2:30PM
📍 105 Ives Hall; in-person attendance preferred. Zoom option available.
A new credit history law will go into effect in NYS on April 18, limiting when employers may review/use an individual’s credit history to make employment decisions. This aims to promote fairness by preventing the use of financial history as criteria for hiring/promotion. Check out #CornellILR's FAQ:
Archival photograph of former Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins. This photo is part of the Kheel Center archives, housed in the Cornell University ILR School's Catherwood Library
New York State Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon and members of the Department of Labor leadership team viewing archival items from the Kheel Center, housed in the Cornell University ILR School's Catherwood Library
Archival items from the Kheel Center, housed in the Cornell University ILR School's Catherwood Library.
Commissioner Reardon and Department of Labor leadership toured Ives Hall and spent time in Catherwood Library, including #CornellILR's Kheel Center, viewing archival items relating to former Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, a central figure in promoting labor rights in NYS and the nation.
ILR School Dean Alexander Colvin with New York State Department of Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon
New York State Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon visiting the Cornell University ILR School
New York State Department of Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon visiting the Cornell University ILR School, speaking with faculty and staff from the Yang Tan Institute on Disability and Employment.
Last week, we welcomed @nyslabor.bsky.social Commissioner Roberta Reardon to #CornellILR!
Commissioner Reardon is a 2006 graduate of ILR's Union Leadership Institute and has been a great partner to ILR in our mission of promoting positive labor-management relations in New York State.
The team will develop tools and protocols that allow platforms and users to see and verify how AI systems shape conversations. The long-term vision is a new communication ecosystem in which AI can assist and mediate discussions at scale.
#CornellILR professors @michelebelot.bsky.social, JR Keller and Philipp Kircher are part of a team that will help workers transition to new positions in the AI economy by using AI to transform job duties into practice activities for job candidates before interviews.
#CornellILR 2026 Union Days keynote conversation: "You Can't Win What You Don't Build: What 17 Years in the Labor Movement Have Taught Me About Leadership, Power & Lasting Change." Safanya Searcy will share lessons from 17 years in the labor movement.
🗓️ April 20, 4:30PM
📍In-person, Statler Hall 398
Kate Bronfenbrenner, senior lecturer emerita at the Cornell University ILR School
Kate Bronfenbrenner retired this year as #CornellILR senior lecturer & labor education research director. For 3 decades, she trained thousands of Cornellians + students of the Cornell/AFL-CIO Strategic Corporate Research Summer School. @klbrenner.bsky.social www.ilr.cornell.edu/news/alumni/...
Join us for Supported Employment Strategies for Maximizing Competitive Integrated Employment for those with Most Significant Disabilities
#supportedemployment #competitiveemployment
📍CRC available
🗓 April 14, 2026
⏰ 1:00–3:00 p.m. ET
👉 Register here: www.ytionline.org/webinars/88
While for parents, it may be difficult to watch their children turn to such a physically demanding career, Shetler says that this generation is "finding a lot of pride and solidarity in this different type of work.”
Melissa Shetler, an education associate at #CornellILR, discusses the changing attitudes among young people toward trade careers and higher education.
@nytimes.com reports that dozens of hopeful and current apprentices said that a job in the trades seemed like the best route for their futures.
I got to be an expert in more ways than one on how hard it is to break off a wedding engagement when I appeared on one of my favorite podcasts to discuss “The Wedding Singer”. 😉
lovefactually.substack.com/p/episode-47...
#CornellILR's annual #UnionDays events offer an opportunity throughout April to meet labor leaders and gain understanding of current labor issues.
Organized/sponsored by ILR's Worker Institute, the series will feature a book talk, documentary film screening, keynote address and panel discussion.
“There’s more social value in being civil, but there can be social value in acting uncivilly, provided that it’s retaliatory,” said #CornellILR assistant professor @merrickosborne.bsky.social. “In retaliation, it’s seen as helping to...establish to the instigator that they did something wrong.”
Civil responses to disrespectful behavior remain the best option, but in a variety of contexts – from hockey fights to the workplace – experiments showed that people view an uncivil action or comment more leniently when performed as retaliation rather than instigation. @merrickosborne.bsky.social
#CornellILR's annual Union Days start next week with a book talk and signing ft. Bill Gould, the @law.stanford.edu Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Emeritus.
🗓️ April 9, 2026 at 4:30pm ET
📍 281 Ives Hall, Doherty Meeting Space
In-person is encouraged, but Zoom = available via the events page!
Steven Calco, head of the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives, which is housed in the Cornell ILR School's Catherwood Library.
Steven Calco (center) and ILR Dean Alex Colvin (left) at the Triangle Fire Memorial, which was officially unveiled on October 11, 2023.
Kheel Center's Steven Calco chatting with Catherwood Library interim director Jim DelRosso and Cornell ILR School professor of labor history, Paul Ortiz, at a graduate student reception.
#CornellILR is happy to announce that Steven Calco is taking on the role of Head of the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives as of today! 👏 He first joined the Kheel Center in 2018 as a research archivist, before becoming interim assistant director in 2024. Congrats, Steven! 🎉
Paul Ortiz, professor of labor history at #CornellILR, comments on the enduring impact of the farmworker movement's legacy despite the allegations against Chavez. The ongoing legacies of civil rights battles "are unchanged," he says, "and those legacies are all about people power." (via @apnews.com)
On April 3 at 1pm EDT, join #CornellILR for a free webinar: "Hiring and Retaining the Justice-Impacted: Expanding Your Employee Talent Management Strategy." Register to learn why fair-chance hiring is one of the most underutilized solutions to today's worker shortage and talent pipeline challenges.
Instead of looking at how to make workers more machine-like, says Litwin, companies should be asking, “What do our people already do especially well, and how do we let them do more of that? What else do they need from us in order to do their jobs better and to be happier doing them?”
“I would want to know whether Burger King plans to use Patty to encourage, compliment or reward workers who do especially well,” adds Litwin. “Absent that, the technology looks less like coaching and more like measurement — and employees are usually sophisticated enough to notice the difference.”