About

Johnnie Kallas is an Assistant Professor at the School of Labor and Employment Relations. He holds a PhD in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University, earned in 2023, a Master’s degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University obtained in 2020, and a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and History from Oberlin College in 2014. His research interests include strikes and labor militancy, labor organizing and union revitalization in the United States, and labor relations in healthcare. In conjunction with his research, Professor Kallas serves as the project director of the Labor Action Tracker, a publicly accessible, comprehensive database of strike activity displayed on an interactive map.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Public relations
• Engineering
• Law
• Nursing
• Labour economics
• Marketing
• Economics
• Management
• Medicine
• Business

Selected publications

• “Now you’ve united a bunch of pissed off, passionate queers who want to take action”: Examining How Union Activists Practiced Intersectional Organizing at Work to Unionize Starbucks

  Industrial and Labor Relations Review · 2026-05-19

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Since 2021, workers across various large, private-sector employers in the United States have unionized. Groups of marginalized workers have led many of these campaigns, reflecting the need for more intersectional analyses of union organizing. This study explores how union activists practice intersectional organizing at work. Drawing on interviews with 53 union activists and representatives from Starbucks Workers United, the author finds that many workers leveraged management’s virtue signaling and progressive brand image, and their lived experiences as marginalized individuals, to advance their organizing campaign at work. These findings emphasize the linkage, rather than distinction or incompatibility, between social identity and economic action. This study contributes to the field of industrial relations by connecting union activists’ social identities, particularly sexual orientation and gender nonconformity, to the emergence of labor activism.

  PublisherDOI

• Deepening Our Understanding of Labor Action: Examining How Workers Organize Different Types of Strikes in the United States

  Industrial Relations A Journal of Economy and Society · 2025-04-10 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT This paper draws on qualitative fieldwork on the Starbucks Workers United campaign and a comprehensive database of strike activity to better understand how workers organize strikes in the United States. By analyzing multiple types of strikes, this study challenges more conventional understandings of work stoppages as predominantly indefinite conflicts to resolve bargaining impasses. Strikes organized by workers with limited structural power resources may not always compel an immediate settlement, but union activists interpret strike effectiveness according to a range of indicators beyond whether they achieve material demands. These findings demonstrate the diverse ways that workers organize strikes and how they can leverage different power resources through industrial action.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• What About Labor?: A Broader Conceptualization of Worker Voice (CANCELLED)

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  article

  Worker voice has been conceptualized in various ways both across and within related fields dedicated to the study of work, including Organizational Behavior (OB), Human Resources (HR), and Industrial Relations (IR). While OB and HR have generally viewed the voice of workers as a means to improve organizational performance, IR has been broader in understanding voice not only as a way to improve performance, but as an objective in its own right. Particularly, this broader conception of voice involves the extent to which workers can value their contribution to an organization, improve their lives in the workplace and at home, and speak up within and beyond the workplace towards broader organizational, occupational, societal, and economic goals. As young scholars of voice, we suggest that the current voice conceptualizations do not fully account for work and workers in the modern era of organizations, and may leave out important perspectives from other stakeholders to organizations. While performance-related voice is important, there are other salient dimensions of worker voice involving different mechanisms, enactments, targets, and results that may be overlooked when the focus is almost exclusively on organizational performance. We further assert that clarifying these different aspects of voice can help develop a stronger theory and more comprehensive understanding of the complexities of the 21st century workplace, which has been riddled with challenges for labor on the frontlines. Given the state of the labor movement in the US, we also hope our IR perspective can help illuminate why workers’ voices are important to organizations as well as to workers themselves and other stakeholders. The papers in this symposium thus cover understudied formal voice mechanisms facilitated by unions, such as labor-management partnership, labor organizing, and strikes, as well as other voice mechanisms in non-union organizations. In light of the many social, economic, and workplace challenges and inequities that were only exacerbated during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the waves of labor action and unrest that have followed in both the private and public sectors, we contend that a broader perspective of voice will be a necessary and central contribution in order to better understand the future of work, workers, and organizations alike.

  PublisherDOI

• International trends in unionisation

  LSE Research Online · 2024-01-01

  article
  Publisher

• What If You Mobilize Effectively and Still Do Not Win? Reclaiming a Relational Understanding of Strike Outcomes and Employer Power Resources

  British Journal of Industrial Relations · 2024-09-30 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT In this study, the author draws on a comparison of two strikes by US healthcare workers to examine power resources and strike effectiveness. Unions mobilized a range of power resources in each case yet achieved different outcomes. The author argues that variation in bargaining power, particularly employer power resources, rather than union strategy, explains divergent strike outcomes. The author advances a relational understanding of power resources by explaining how employer resources and strategies shape labour's resources and strategies to produce outcomes for workers and their organizations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Breaking the deadlock: How union and employer tactics affect first contract achievement

  Industrial Relations Journal · 2023 · 10 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Business

  Abstract The United States labour movement faces a potentially transformative moment, as workers have won breakthrough union organizing victories at various high‐profile, private‐sector employers. While winning an election is essential to establishing collective bargaining, unions then need to secure a first contract with employers to make tangible improvements in working conditions. Drawing on a sample of 126 responses about postcertification collective bargaining, we find that both employer and union tactics have significant impacts on first contract achievement. Employers continue to impede first contract achievement by committing unfair labour practices, but unions can improve their chances of establishing an agreement by utilizing tactics that engage the public.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Having a Say Matters: The Association Between Home Health Aides’ Voice and Job Satisfaction

  Risk Management and Healthcare Policy · 2023-09-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  Purpose: Despite a rapidly growing need for home health aides (HHAs), turnover rates are high. While this is driven in large part by the demanding nature of their work and low wages, another factor may be that HHAs are often not considered part of the medical team which can leave them feeling unheard by other healthcare professionals. We sought to determine whether this concept, or HHAs' perceived voice, was associated with job satisfaction. Methods and Design: This cross-sectional survey of English- and Spanish-speaking HHAs caring for adults with heart failure (HF) was conducted from June 2020 to July 2021 in New York, NY in partnership with a labor management fund of a large healthcare union that provides benefits and training to HHAs. Voice was assessed with a validated 5-item scale (total score range 5 to 25). Job Satisfaction was assessed with the 5-item Work Domain Satisfaction Scale (total score range 5 to 35). Multivariable linear regression analysis was used to examine the association between voice and job satisfaction. Results: A total of 413 HHAs employed by 56 unique home care agencies completed the survey; they had a mean age of 48 years, 97.6% were female, 60.2% were Hispanic, and they worked as HHAs for a median of 10 years (IQR, 5, 17). They had a median Voice score of 18 (IQR 15-20) and mean job satisfaction score of 26.4 (SD 5.6). Higher levels of voice (1.75 [0.46-3.04]) were associated with greater job satisfaction (p=0.008). When adjusting for Race/Ethnicity, HF training, and HF knowledge, the association between Voice and job satisfaction remained significant ((1.77 [0.40-3.13]). Conclusion: HHAs with a voice in the care of their patients experienced greater job satisfaction. Voice may be an important target for interventions aiming to improve HHAs' retention in the field.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• An Overview of US Workers’ Current Organizing Efforts and Collective Actions

  Work and Occupations · 2023 · 27 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Public relations

  American workers are currently engaged in an upsurge in collective actions aimed at achieving a stronger voice and representation at work; this desire for increased voice at work is also evident in survey data. However, union organizing drives in the United States typically meet with strong employer resistance, and such resistance reduces the likelihood that the organizing effort will be successful. In addition to unions, a broad array of other efforts has been initiated to strengthen worker voice and representation. The authors discuss these efforts, including worker centers, and observe that there is no “one size fits all” approach to contemporary worker organizing.

  PublisherDOI

• "I Go Beyond and Beyond" Examining the Invisible Work of Home Health Aides

  Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · 2023 · 29 citations

  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  Home health aides are paid professionals who provide long-term care to an expanding population of adults who need it. However, aides' work is often unrecognized by the broader caregiving team despite being in demand and crucial to care---an invisibility reinforced by ill-suited technological tools. In order to understand the invisible work aides perform and its relationship to technology design, we interviewed 13 aides employed by home care agencies in New York City. These aides shared examples that demonstrated the intertwined nature of both types of invisible work (i.e., emotions- and systems-based) and expanded the sociological mechanisms of invisibility (i.e., sociocultural, sociolegal, sociospatial) to include the sociotechnical. Through these findings, we investigate the opportunities, tensions, and challenges that could inform the design of tools created for these important, but often overlooked, frontline caregivers.

  PublisherDOI

• Retooling militancy: Labour revitalization and fixed‐duration strikes

  British Journal of Industrial Relations · 2022-09-08 · 13 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Despite decades of decline in strike rates, recent scholarship has examined how unions and labour organizations are retooling the strike to confront increasing employer power. This study focuses on a militant labour union and the emergence of an understudied type of strike – the fixed‐duration strike – as a source of labour revitalization. Drawing from qualitative data gathered on fixed‐duration strikes organized by a union of registered nurses in the United States, I investigate the strategic adaptation of labour militancy and how these strikes overcome the limitations of traditional, indefinite work stoppages. I find that fixed‐duration strikes protect the economic interests of nurses and advance their role as patient care advocates, while still imposing financial and reputational costs on employers. These findings suggest that the strategic adaptation of militant tactics, such as the strike, help labour organizations achieve revitalization outcomes like contract victories and enhanced membership activism.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Madeline R. Sterling

  Cornell University

  10 shared

• Ariel C. Avgar

  6 shared

• Justin Vinton

  New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations

  6 shared

• Joanna Bryan Ringel

  Weill Cornell Medicine

  6 shared

• Amy Shaw

  New York Hospital Queens

  4 shared

• Rosemary Batt

  Cornell University

  4 shared

• Catherine Riffin

  Weill Cornell Medicine

  4 shared

• Nicola Dell

  Cornell University

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• First Decade Achievement