Carrie Gleason

Carrie Gleason
Fair Workweek Initiative Director
Economic Justice, Fair Workweek, Scheduling, and Worker Organizing

Carrie Gleason directs the Fair Workweek Initiative, a collaborative effort anchored by the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), that brings together grassroots organizations across the country to shift employer practices and win policy solutions that achieve an equitable workweek for today’s workforce. She provides analysis of part-time employment, scheduling trends and the retail sector for national policymakers and media outlets, which have included NPR and the New York Times.

Carrie co-founded the Retail Action Project (RAP), a fast-growing organization of retail workers dedicated to improving opportunities and standards in the retail industry.  As RAP’s Executive Director from 2010-2014, Carrie oversaw the organization’s base-building and strategic campaigns, research and empowering direct services to grow an industry voice for New York City retail workers. RAP emerged from an innovative community-labor partnership with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU/UFCW) and the Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES) that helped thousands of retail workers in lower Manhattan successfully fight wage theft and discrimination, winning millions in unpaid wages.

Carrie began organizing retail workers in 2005 and has worked in the labor movement for over 14 years, leading several winning unionization campaigns for the RWDSU and the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council (UNITE-HERE). She is a member of the Presidential Council of Cornell Women and served on the North Star Fund Community Funding Committee. Carrie was a 2009-2010 Charles H. Revson Fellow, a Program on the Future of New York City at Columbia University, and holds a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and son.

Articles:

Volatile Schedules Exacerbate Inequality
New York Times, 7.23.14

A Walmart Employee on Strike
New York Times, 1.27.14

Part-Time Workers’ Cut-Rate Deal
New York Times, 12.4.13


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