Tom Juravich

Professor of Labor Studies and Sociology University of Massachusetts Amherst

  • Amherst MA

Tom Juravich studies work, workers and the labor movement.

Contact

University of Massachusetts Amherst

View more experts managed by University of Massachusetts Amherst

Expertise

Labor Unions
Ethnographic Research
Labor Movements
Work and the Labor Process
Working Class and Union Culture

Biography

Tom Juravich studies work, workers and the labor movement. He is currently researching wage theft and the work of undocumented workers in residential construction. He is also part of an NSF grant exploring the impact of artificial intelligence and computer based technology on the future of work.

He teaches strategic corporate research and campaigns to a variety of union, community and environmental groups and is the designer and webmaster of www.StrategicCorporateReseach.org, a comprehensive website for conducting corporate research in the U.S. and Canada.

Juravich serves as chair of the Labor and Labor Movements section of the American Sociological Association and is on the editorial boards of the New Labor Forum and the Labor Studies Journal. A singer and songwriter, Juravich’s latest recordings include "Altar of the Bottom Line" and "Tangled in Our Dreams (with Teresa Healy)."

Social Media

Education

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Ph.D.

Sociology

State University of New York, Albany

M.A.

Sociology

State University of New York, Albany

B.A.

Sociology/Psychology

Select Recent Media Coverage

Can workers learn to respect those who choose not to?

Esquire Middle East  online

2023-05-16

Tom Juravich, professor of sociology and labor studies, comments in an article about the diminishing view of the value of work. Juravich says, “I don’t think policy people have understood how big this shift in thinking about work is yet and I don’t see effective change coming one ‘mom and pop’ business at a time. What it will take are major employers—an Amazon, a Google—to make a bold experiment in changing working hours, and so far they seem to be doing very little to set new standards.

View More

Northeastern dining hall workers approve most lucrative contract in Local 26 history

The Boston Globe  print

2022-09-13

Not long ago, the gold standard was $15 an hour, said Thomas Juravich, a labor studies professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Now it’s been pushed to $30, which will help more people afford to live in a high-cost city like Boston. “That kind of fairness and dignity allows you to have a life and live a life. And those who work in hotels and cafeterias should be able to have those lives too, not just professionals,” Juravich said.

View More

Boston's Museum of Fine Arts agrees to first union contract with workers

CBS News  online

2022-06-29

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, museums were forced to shut down and lay off workers, and many employees realized they had few legal protections, said Tom Juravich, a professor of sociology and labor studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Museums have treated their rank-and-file employees as little more than servants for years, and more workers have been unionizing as attitudes change among younger employees, especially, Juravich said.

View More

Show All +

Select Publications

We need new tools to deal with epidemic of wage theft

CommonWealth Magazine

Tom Juravich

2022-04-30

"Massachusetts needs new legislation to curb wage theft because what happened in Amherst should have never happened and should never happen again. Nine undocumented Hondurans worked 10 hours a day, six days a week for five weeks in a row hanging sheetrock in a new apartment complex in Amherst. Collectively they were owed $50,173 for their labor – but they did not receive one penny in wages."

View more

“Bread and Roses”

Labor Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas

2020-05-07

This paper traces the history of the song “Bread and Roses” to examine labor culture and the role of song in the labor movement. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, “Bread and Roses” was included in several of the first generation song books produced by unions that reflected an expansive and inclusive labor culture closely connected with the Left.

View more