Brian E. Greenberg, Ph.D., emeritus professor of history and Jules Plangere Chair in American Social History, will be honored by The New York Labor History Association (NYLHA) with a John Commerford Labor Education Award at a virtual ceremony on Dec. 3 from 6 – 7:30 p.m. Preregistration is required for the free event and donations to the NYLHA are strongly encouraged.
Each year the NYLHA celebrates two honorees with the John Commerford Labor Education Award for their contributions to workers’ empowerment. Previous recipients of the award, which was established in 1987, include Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jennifer Egan; Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Dolores C. Huerta, co-founder—with Cesar Chavez—of the United Farm Workers; New York Times labor and workplace journalist Steven Greenhouse; folk singer and activist Peter Yarrow; and former Farnam Professor of History at Yale University David Montgomery, considered one of the foremost academics specializing in United States labor history.
In addition to many scholarly articles, Greenberg is most recently the author of “The Dawning of American Labor: The New Republic to the Industrial Age,” published by Wiley Blackwell in 2017. His other works include “Upheaval in the Quiet Zone: 1199SEIU and the Politics of Health Care Unionism,” co-authored by Leon Fink and published by the University of Illinois Press; and “Social History of the United States: The 1900s,” part of a cornerstone 10‑volume reference co-authored with Linda Watts that examines the interplay of policies, events, and everyday life in each decade of the 1900s.
Greenberg is the 2014 recipient of the Donald Warncke Award, sponsored by the Faculty Association of Monmouth University to honor a member of the University community who has distinguished themself through outstanding service. He is also the namesake of the Brian Greenberg Social Justice Award conferred annually to an outstanding student by the Monmouth University Department of History and Anthropology.
The John Commerford Labor Education Awards event is a partnership between The New York Labor History Associate, Labor Arts, and the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive at NYU Special Collections.
The NYLHA was founded in 1976 by trade unionists, academics, students, archivists, educators, labor editors, attorneys, and retirees, mostly from New York State. NYLHA encourages the study of workers and their organizations and serves as a bridge between past and present labor unionists and academics.