Rate My Professor William Brucher

William Brucher serves as Associate Teaching Professor in the Labor Studies and Employment Relations department at Rutgers University's School of Management and Labor Relations. He earned a Ph.D. in History from Brown University in 2012, with a dissertation titled “On the Edge of the Pacific Rim: Capitalism and Work on the Los Angeles Waterfront,” focusing on capitalism, labor, and economic development on the Los Angeles waterfront. He also received an A.M. in History from Brown University in 2007 and a B.A. in History, magna cum laude, from Bates College in 2002, where his honors thesis examined the rise and fall of the textile industry in Lewiston, Maine. Brucher joined Rutgers in 2014 as a Post-Doctoral Associate in the Labor Studies and Employment Relations department, advanced to Instructor from 2015 to 2019, served as Assistant Teaching Professor starting in June 2019, and currently holds the position of Associate Teaching Professor. Prior to Rutgers, he worked as Labor Educator at the Washington State Labor Education and Research Center at South Seattle College from 2012 to 2014, Adjunct Professor at National Labor College in 2013, and as a union organizer for the Maine State Employees Association - SEIU Local 1989 and Service Employees International Union from 2002 to 2006.

Brucher's research specializations include United States social and cultural history, transnational labor history, and modern Latin American history. His key publications comprise the peer-reviewed article “From the Picket Line to the Playground: Labor, Environmental Activism, and the International Paper Strike in Jay, Maine” published in Labor History 52, no. 1 (2011), and the encyclopedia entry “Labor Unions and Strikes” in Conflicts in American History: A Documentary Encyclopedia, Volume 6 (2010). He has contributed book reviews to Labor Studies Journal, Western Historical Quarterly, and The Michigan Historical Quarterly, and is developing a book manuscript based on his dissertation. Among his honors are Dissertation Research and Writing Fellowships from Brown University Graduate School (2009–2011), the John R. Haynes and Dorothy Haynes Foundation Fellowship at the Huntington Library (2010), Historical Society of Southern California Haynes Foundation Fellowship (2010), and the Ernest P. Muller Prize for the Most Distinguished Honors Thesis in History from Bates College (2002). Brucher teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on labor history, including U.S. Labor and Employment Before the End of Reconstruction (37:575:201), History of Labor and Work in the United States, 1880 to 1945 (37:575:202), U.S. Labor History, 1945 to the Present (37:575:203), and Labor and Employment History (37:578:612). He supports labor education through Rutgers' Labor Education Action Research Network (LEARN), delivering union steward trainings, online courses, and film series. Brucher provides expert commentary on contemporary labor issues, appearing in media such as The New York Times, Law360, Supply Chain Dive, WHYY, and WGN Radio on topics including dockworkers strikes, port automation, NJ Transit disputes, and union contract negotiations.