Megan Brown

Megan Brown is a Ph.D. Candidate in Geography. Megan’s research interests include the modern labor movement and social movements. Brown’s research “investigates the strategic and practical mechanisms through which labor unions, progressive worker and community organizations, and policy makers are spreading $15/hour minimum wages throughout the U.S.” Labor collections used by Brown for her research and featured in the exhibit include the Guillermo “Memo Rivera” Collection of SEIU 775 and Working Washington records as well as oral histories from the SeaTac Seattle Minimum Wage History Project.

Megan’s Commentary:

“The Fight for $15 is a rapidly growing movement for higher minimum wages and on-the-job rights for low-wage workers. My dissertation investigates the strategic and practical mechanisms through which labor unions, progressive worker and community organizations, and policy makers are spreading $15/hour minimum wages throughout the U.S. Because the diffusion of these campaigns across the U.S. is still in process, an important and brief window is currently open for the empirical investigation of the spatial strategies employed by labor organizations, the variation of these strategies across locations, and the generalized patterns of movement of minimum wage increases as they proliferate throughout the country. This project takes the form of a three-part comparative case study, investigating both the connective flows and moments of disjuncture between the sites in which campaigns for higher minimum wages have been executed.”