NIKOLAUS KRACHLER
PhD candidate, Cornell University, ILR School
1) What is the focus of your session?
The session is about professional workers and labor relations. Its focus is on how to organize professional workers, what their values are, and how these are embedded in their work.
2) What is one key takeaway that someone will be able to implement in their workplace after going to your session?
Professionals have strong capacities to defend their interests, but their values need to be mobilized and re-defined by unions, so that professionals do not view professional values and workers’ interests in contradiction to one another.
3) It’s ILR’s 70th Anniversary. Any predictions about how your research might influence the next generation and their World of Work?
Hopefully unions will be able to mobilize professional power in the interests of workers and it would be great if any of my research were useful in that endeavor. Research-wise, I would hope for a greater focus on subjectivity and social embeddedness in organizations.
4) How has participating in LERA enhanced your experience at ILR?
Reading many great works at ILR is one thing, but meeting the people at LERA is of course another! I think it will be quite inspiring to meet a lot of great researchers from the wider labor relations community, and also useful to gain further insights into the field. Presenting a paper usually also helps develop it further, so I am also expecting some great comments, and an insightful discussion on professionals. There will also be a lot of ILR grad students at the conference, and we will be travelling and spending a lot of time together, so that will also further build up the strong grad student community at ILR