Michael Zweig

Michael Zweig discusses his new book with Faye Guenther, the President of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 3000. Class, Race, and Gender is for those who want to understand the underlying connections among today’s social justice movements. Bringing forth the basic operations of capitalist economies, Class, Race, and Gender: Challenging the Injuries and Divisions of Capitalism reveals what is driving many of today’s most urgent and vexing problems: the common origins of the inequalities of income, wealth, and power; environmental devastation; militarism; racism and white supremacy; patriarchy and male chauvinism; periodic economic crises; and the cultural conflicts that are tearing at US life. Michael Zweig illuminates all propositions with specific examples from US history, from the first settlement of the New World to current life, including his own lived experiences as an activist, educator, and organizer over the past six decades. As such, the book is an urgently needed resource for activists and organizers seeking structural and moral transformation of life in the US. Building on his analysis, Zweig also presents strategies for political action in electoral and movement-building work. Michael Zweig, emeritus professor of economics and founding director of the Center for Study of Working Class Life at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. His past books include Religion and Economic Justice; The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret ; and What's Class Got to Do with It? American Society in the Twenty-First Century . From 2005 to 2006, he served as executive producer of the documentary Meeting Face to Face: The Iraq-U.S. Labor Solidarity Tour . In 2009 he wrote, produced, and directed the film Why Are We in Afghanistan? which won the Working Class Studies Association Studs Terkel Award for media and journalism. In 2014 he received their award for lifetime contributions to the field of working-class studies. Faye Guenther is the elected President of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 3000, the largest UFCW local in the nation with more than 50,000 members in grocery stores, health care, retail, cannabis and other industries in Washington, northern Idaho and northeastern Oregon. Guenther started with UFCW in 1999, organizing and representing workers and building to win better contracts through negotiations and strike preparation. After graduating from the University of Oregon School of Law, she rejoined UFCW 21 in 2008 and helped bargain contracts and worked as Staff Director. In 2015 she was elected Secretary Treasurer, where she worked to create an investment policy for the strike and defense fund generating millions of dollars of return for UFCW members. Guenther serves as the lead negotiator on contracts, a trustee of UFCW 3000’s health and pension plan, new Variable Annuity Defined Benefit pension, sits on the UFCW International’s Advisory Board, acts as a Board member of the International Foundation and is the founder and President of WeTrain Washington. Guenther and her staff have organized and trained a new generation of leaders to organize workplaces, win minimum wage raises for hundreds of thousands of workers, gain paid sick leave for a million workers across the state, and pass the strongest Paid Family and Medical Leave law in the nation, all while negotiating high industry-leading standards in hundreds of UFCW 3000 contracts. Faye is also a mom with two teenage children. Faye grew up in Spray, Oregon, a rural community in the least populated county of Oregon. Faye worked painting buildings, fighting fire, office clerk and as night security to put herself through college at Oregon State University. Faye enjoys reading books, camping, and spending time with her family in Pendleton, Spokane, Spray and Eugene.

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