(NewsWorty.news) – A talented labor organizer who helped workers around the world learn to form effective unions died this weekend.
Jane McAlevey, a well-educated social reformer, died on Sunday July 7. The 59-year-old reportedly passed from multiple myeloma cancer, according to Mitchell Rotbert, her stepbrother. Although McAlevey’s main residence was in New York City, she died in her West coast cabin, located in Muir Beach, California.
The union specialist’s life work was motivated by the belief that the best method to ensure economic equality was through worker-driven unions, which run from the lower end to the top rather than vice versa. McAlevey’s website describes her “core themes” as ones which were developed in her childhood and remained constant throughout her life and work.
She identified them as horses, helping many people learn how to know and “build their own power,” and “an unswerving commitment” to social justice and equality. She further emphasized the importance of “the cause of labor” by referring to it as “the hope of the world.”
McAlevey spearheaded successful labor campaigns between 1997 and 2008, for both the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Following these campaigns, she began working as a consultant by guiding labor groups throughout the United States in how to respond to injustice.
Additionally, McAlevey was involved with groups dedicated to the rights of immigrants, tenants, and climate activists. This work took her across the globe, where she assisted labor unions in Germany, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
McAlevey was diagnosed with cancer in September 2021, later learning that her bone marrow transplant and chemotherapy had failed to stop the disease. At the time, doctors thought she would only live weeks, but she successfully published her fourth book last year.
In April, she wrote an open letter addressed to friends, family, colleagues, and followers to inform them that she was in hospice care at her home to fight the rest of her illness. The letter was titled, “I have loved being in this world with you.” McAlevey is survived by three brothers, one sister, and two stepbrothers.
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