A unionization workshop with The Architecture Lobby and the MOCA Union

The last year has been a strange one for workers. Will there be layoffs? What is really expected of us? Are we being treated equitably? Can we have a say? Crisis can reveal and make more urgent the questions we’ve had all along.

Even before the global pandemic, workers in building and creative industries struggled to pay off student debt, support their families, and maintain their own well-being. A professional culture that celebrates genius and undervalues labor complicates matters. What can be achieved when we recognize that we are all part of the same, precarious labor force?

M&A celebrates May Day this month by learning about unions: what they are, how to establish your own, and who they empower. Join us for a workshop with Architecture Lobby organizers Keefer Dunn and Shota Vashakmadze, plus a presentation from Olivia Leiter of the MOCA Union. Together we’ll work through the pragmatics and aspirations of labor organizing for architects, students, and scholars alike.

SPEAKERS

Keefer Dunn is a licensed architect based in Chicago, Illinois. He is a sole practitioner, an adjunct assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the host of a radio show about architecture and politics called Buildings on Air. He is a member of the Architecture Lobby and has previously served as the group’s National Organizer.

Olivia Leiter is an artist living in Los Angeles. She has had recent screenings and exhibitions at the California Museum of Photography, Riverside, Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles, and Human Resources, Los Angeles. She is on the organizing committee of the MOCA Union.

Shota Vashakmadze is a PhD student at UCLA and an organizer with UAW 2865, a union representing 19,000 student workers in the University of California system. He is a member of the Architecture Lobby and helps coordinate its unionization working group.

At Work is the first event of Material Realities, a series of workshops and conversations about the positions we hold within a multitude of material circumstances. While we may be "architects" and "designers," we are also workers, tenants, kin, and allies. Material Realities explores our intersectional subjectivities to understand how we may collectively better our conditions.

Material Realities: At Work was organized by Aubrey Bauer, Kate Yeh Chiu, Mateus Comparato, Jesse Hammer, Alyssa Lopez, Kendall Mann, and Dana McKinney.