Leon Fink who, together with co-author Brian Greenberg, wrote Upheaval in the Quiet Zone: 1199SEIU and the Politics of Healthcare Unionism, is this year’s recipient of the Sidney Hillman Foundation Labor Historian award.



The Foundation, named for the founder of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, honors contributors to the daily, periodical, and labor press, as well as authors and broadcasters.



University of Illinois at Chicago Professor Emeritus Fink, a specialist in the modern American labor movement, immigration history, and the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, was honored May 6 during the foundation’s annual dinner and ceremony in New York City.



Fink has written, co-authored, or co-edited nine books, in addition to Upheaval in the Quiet Zone, including his most recent publications, “Workers in Hard Times: A Long View of Economic Crises” (2014); “Sweatshops at Sea: Merchant Seamen in the World’s First Globalized Industry, from 1812 to the Present” (2011); and “Workers Across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History” (2011). He has also been involved with national efforts to link public history and K-12 history education.



Fink is founding editor of the quarterly journal Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas. At UIC he established a doctoral concentration in the history of work, race and gender in the urban world.