Episode 4: Greg Kelley

In the fourth episode of Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts welcomes Greg Kelley, President of SEIU Health Care Illinois.  Greg gave us a sense of how he got into labor organizing.  We moved to get a sense of how COVID has impacted union members and their resolve to use the power of their union to protect their quality of life on the job.  Greg relayed stories of how efforts to build racial solidarity within the union going back to the murder of Michael Brown in 2014 bore fruits this year as the union fought the impacts of COVID and fought for racial justice.  Greg concluded by sharing his vision for 2021 linking the work of the union with the mission of Black freedom.

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.