Source: Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 41 no. 1, March 2016
From the introduction:
Labor education programs exist across the country. Some are parts of certificate- or degree-granting programs, others are sponsored and presented by unions, and still others are ad hoc community initiatives to address specific crises or needs. Other worker-education efforts are finding new life through community groups and activist initiatives. Labor education is an important component of the labor movement. It creates memberships that are engaged with what their unions are doing and are knowledgeable about what the labor movement has done and is attempting to do. Labor education can nurture the union leaders of tomorrow and build membership ranks that can withstand ideological, financial, and political attacks on organized labor. It also can mobilize membership to achieve a range of social justice goals, not only bettering themselves but also improving the world around them.
At the 2015 United Association for Labor Education (UALE) Conference, three panels of papers addressed this topic. This special issue of Labor Studies Journal (LSJ) presents five papers from these panels—four articles as well as an additional Innovations piece that discusses how one educator used community theater to transform labor education. The authors represent a range of disciplines—labor studies, political science, sociology, labor education, and crime and justice studies—and come from both sides of the Canadian/U.S. border. As they discuss labor education in a range of contexts—union halls, colleges and universities, worker institutes, summer schools, and community theater—the writers in this special issue address critical questions in understanding where labor education has been, what challenges remain, and how labor education might evolve in the future. ….
Articles include:
Twenty-First-Century Workers’ Education in North America: The Defeat of the Left or a Revitalized Class Pedagogy?
Source: Corey Dolgon, Reuben Roth, Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 41 no. 1, March 2016
(subscription required)
From the abstract:
The main response (Mantsios 2015) to neoliberalism and the marginalization of labor studies in higher education has been the call for a “new” labor college—one that integrates “workforce development” and liberal arts, yet separates worker education from its working-class roots. This article interrogates the state of worker education and the impact of neoliberalism on various civic engagement efforts at colleges and universities. The authors argue for a critical reevaluation of workers’ education and labor studies programs, calling for organized workers to retake control of such projects to avoid the deradicalization of class politics now ascendant in neoliberal institutions.
Blue-Collar Classroom: From the Individual to the Collective
Source: Sharon Szymanski, Richard Wells, Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 41 no. 1, March 2016
(subscription required)
From the abstract:
This article examines how a labor studies program, most of whose students come from unions in the building trades, wrestles with a deeply rooted perception about the relationship between an individual’s skill and her wages. Aspects of tradition and experience in the unionized building trades validate it, and public discourse today sees it as a basic economic truth. Other aspects of building trades’ tradition and experience, as well as current mobilizations by low-wage service workers, show that collective power determines wages and enables a conversation about the social wage that decouples individual skill from wage levels.
Twenty-First-Century Workers’ Education in North America: The Defeat of the Left or a Revitalized Class Pedagogy?
Source: Corey Dolgon, Reuben Roth, Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 41 no. 1, March 2016
(subscription required)
From the abstract:
The main response (Mantsios 2015) to neoliberalism and the marginalization of labor studies in higher education has been the call for a “new” labor college—one that integrates “workforce development” and liberal arts, yet separates worker education from its working-class roots. This article interrogates the state of worker education and the impact of neoliberalism on various civic engagement efforts at colleges and universities. The authors argue for a critical reevaluation of workers’ education and labor studies programs, calling for organized workers to retake control of such projects to avoid the deradicalization of class politics now ascendant in neoliberal institutions.
Black Lives Matter and Bridge Building Labor Education for a “New Jim Crow” Era
Source: Eric D. Larson, Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 41 no. 1, March 2016
(subscription required)
From the abstract:
This article uses labor history and black history to highlight how labor education can be a crucial tool for unions to respond to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in a way that supports and respects its main demands. It suggests that unions are unlikely to answer the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization’s (AFL-CIO) call for the labor movement to be “partners, allies, and fellow community members” of the BLM movement unless they recognize the structural nature of contemporary “colorblind racism” and confront the root causes of divergent attitudes about the fairness of the criminal justice system. Such causes include the long-standing associations of blackness with criminality and whiteness with innocence, which have long justified the punishment of black workers and the control of all U.S. workers. This article highlights the structural violence of mass incarceration, the spectacular violence of police murder, the symbolic violence of anti-black cultural production, and the sexual violence directed at black women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) blacks. Building on black feminist theory, it argues that labor education that foregrounds the interwoven histories of race and crime, and examines how racism works through class, gender, and other kinds of hierarchies, could serve to capacitate grassroots bridge-builders inside unions. The article suggests that the history of domestic work could be a particularly valuable way for labor educators to discuss the fundamental messages of the Movement for Black Lives.
Labor Education and Leadership Development for Union Women: Assessing the Past, Building for the Future
Source: Emily E. LB. Twarog, Jennifer Sherer, Brigid O’Farrell, Cheryl Coney, Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 41 no. 1, March 2016
(subscription required)
From the abstract:
What roles should women’s labor education play in the twenty-first-century labor movement? This question sparked a series of research, collaboration, and long-range planning activities undertaken by the Union Women’s Labor Education Project starting in 2013. This article builds on work undertaken to date by the Union Women’s Labor Education Project (in collaboration with the Women’s Caucus of the United Association of Labor Educator [UALE] and the Berger-Marks Foundation), presenting a new analysis of relationships among women’s labor education, leadership development, and movement building, with a particular focus on regional UALE women’s summer schools as a case study.