News Archive

Professor Fran Quigley, ’87, has published a new book titled If We Can Win Here: The New Front Lines of the Labor Movement with Cornell University Press.

The book examines the rise of service-sector workers in the labor movement in the United States. Jobs in food service, maintenance, and security are available, but most pay poorly and have unreliable hours and working conditions, Professor Quigley said.

“IU McKinney students and I represent workers like these folks every day in the Health and Human Rights Clinic, so in some ways this book has been in progress as long as we have been advocating for low-wage workers,” he said. He spent about 18 months interviewing workers and organizers and observing their efforts with the intention of writing the just-published book.

The mid-twentieth century labor activism that transformed manufacturing jobs from low-wage work into careers that allowed workers to buy homes and send their children to college is a path some believe that service-sector workers today could take with success.

Professor Quigley is a clinical professor of law, teaching in the Health and Human Rights Clinic. Clinic students advocate for rights on behalf of the poor, and have a special focus on representing low-wage workers.