Episode 17: Dawn Gearhart

In this seventeenth episode of Black Work Talk, our guest today is Dawn Gearhart.  Dawn is the Director of Gig Economy Organizing for the National Domestic Workers Alliance.  Dawn is leading efforts to organize workers who utilize an app to connect with potential clients desiring domestic work services.  Prior to joining NDWA, Dawn organized taxi drivers and gig workers in Seattle. NDWA have just entered into an agreement with the Handy Company to launch a pilot program to improve the quality of work for domestic workers who find work online. Given the rising importance of apps in connecting workers and clients and attempts of many firms that control the apps to resist efforts to build worker power, this effort of NDWA (and other NDWA efforts) is extremely important.  For more information on NDWA’s pilot project with Handy, see https://www.gigworkeradvocates.org/handyhttps://onlabor.org/ndwa-handy-pilot-major-gains-for-workers-long-excluded-from-labor-laws-protections/For additional information on the gig worker organizing at NDWA, seehttps://www.gigworkeradvocates.org/

Om Podcasten

Black Work Talk is a show that elevates the voices of Black labor, workers, leaders, activists, and intellectuals in discussions on the connections between race, labor, capitalism and culture in the struggle for progressive governing power. On season three of Black Work Talk, new hosts Bianca Cunningham and Jamala Rogers explore the impact of 2023’s strike wave in conversations with rank and file workers from unions that have fought or are still fighting for better, more equitable contracts in 2023; including the UAW, Teamsters, Writers Guild of America and more. Where did the energy for this wave of labor movements come from, what does it mean for black workers, and where does it go from here? They also open the conversation by calling in the 90% of American workers who have yet to organize in their workplace with an ongoing accessible and educational series on the process of organizing and filing to start a union from scratch.