Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives—floated as an alternative title for this “Making Work Visible” contest—captures the spirit of most of the work done by the young authors and artists who won prizes in the sixth year of this CUNY/LaborArts contest. The poems, fiction, non-fiction and visual art display imagination, thoughtfulness, and an ability to make links between individual lived experience and larger social issues.

Open to all CUNY undergraduates, contest entries are judged according to originality, content and style. Student writers and artists both draw upon history, upon close observation of the world around them, and upon a wealth of first hand experiences to link their work to the spirit of labor arts. Every year professors judging the contest reflect on the value of providing opportunities for the students to seriously interrogate their life experiences and that of those around them.

From Brian Alarcon’s poem “Work Pants”:

Ah! What a dreary thing it is to sit on the train while everyone else
Stands and towers above you. Crotchlevel, all I can think about are those
Work pants with their dry grays and navys and how perpetual this repetition is.
Laying my head on the shoulder of some jeanhead halfdead Edward Lopez,
The nylon legs look like cities with their belt roofs and button-down skies!
Oh how I don’t want to work a full-time job then die!

Frank Gattie’s nonfiction narrative “The Art of the Speedup” begins:

The forty-hour week is dead. Management has killed it. I can only speak from my own experiences working in the New York City restaurant industry over the past ten years. Maybe it is different in other cities or restaurants that I have not labored in, but I doubt it. It died when management learned how to manipulate in times, breaks, and on-call shifts to avoid overtime. It means many workers must spend entire days in or around their workplaces without a reward for overtime pay. While the forty hour week withers away, an older American value is being revived: the speedup.

Read them all—you will be moved, surprised, impressed.

We sincerely hope that these young authors and artists continue on with their work—their voices demand to be heard.

Photographs of students and from awards ceremony are by Gary Schoiche

Background & Credits

The CUNY/Labor Arts contest aims to expand student’s thinking about labor history—broadly defined—at CUNY, and is open to any undergraduate attending a CUNY college. Begun in 2010, it encourages students to write creatively and analytically about work and workers, to make art about work and workers, and to link their efforts to the spirit of LaborArts.

We were honored to have Laurel Rubin and Gloria Calhoun from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, and Brooklyn College Associate Provost Stuart MacLelland join the contest organizers and judges at the awards ceremony in April.

We would like to thank all of the students who submitted work for the 2015–16 contest, and to congratulate the authors of the prize-winning essays and poems and the creators of the visual art featured in this exhibit. All CUNY students are encouraged to begin considering possible themes for entries in next year’s contest. Guidelines for the 2016–17 contest will be available in fall 2016; the guidelines used for this contest are here.

The contest is funded by The Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, and was made possible this year through the efforts of Professor Joe Entin, Director of Graduate Studies Patrick Kavanagh and Associate Provost Stuart MacLelland from Brooklyn College/CUNY; and Rachel Bernstein and Evelyn Jones Rich from LaborArts.

Special thanks go to our judges: Professor Julie Agoos of the Brooklyn College English Department (Poetry); Professor Michael Rawson of the Brooklyn College History Department (Non-Fiction); Sujatha Fernandes of the Queens College Sociology Separtment (Fiction); and Professor Becca Albee of the City College Art Department (Visual Art). Many thanks to Graduate Center for Worker Education’s director Lucas Rubin and his extraordinary staff, including Asif Qureshi and Anselma Rodriguez, and to LaborArts intern Veronica Garcia.

The photographs of students and event speakers were taken by photographer Gary Schoichet at the Awards Ceremony, held at the Brooklyn College Graduate Center for Worker Education in Lower Manhattan on April 19, 2016.