The Labor Studies Center
Institute for Research on Labor, Employment, and the Economy
University of Michigan
Who We Are
Since 1957 the Labor Studies Center (LSC), a component of the University of Michigan's Institute for Research on Labor, Employment, and the Economy (previously the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations), has developed educational offerings to address the issues arising between management and labor. We offer a number of non-credit conferences that promote the participation of women and minorities in leadership roles, both in the workplace and in their communities; leadership, stewardship, and educational workshops; and programs on workers' culture, both through workshop offerings and skits, readings, etc., by a rank-and-file performing theater troupe. The Labor Studies Center is staffed with experienced labor educators who are dedicated to adult education that empowers workers and allows them to keep pace with today's global economy and the changing roles of unions and their members.
What sets the University of Michigan's Labor Studies Center apart is our emphasis on training peer educators in our women and minorities' conferences. Utilizing this process, past participants may choose to advance from participant, to instructor-in-training, to instructor, and possibly to co-coordinator of a conference. Many of our attendees have gone on to run successfully for local office, both in union and public positions, while some have advanced to positions at the national and international levels of their respective unions.
Currently, UM LSC educational programs fall into four basic categories. These are: 1) on-site training (Collective Bargaining, Grievance Handling, Labor History, Contract Interpretation and Labor Law, Parliamentary Procedure, Train-the-Trainer, Sexual Harassment, and Cultural Diversity, et al.); 2) corporate development training; 3) joint labor-management training; and 4) our leadership institutes. These conferences — the Michigan Summer School for Women Workers, the Black Men in Unions Institute, the Winter Leadership Institute, the Latina/o Workers Leadership Institute, and the Workers Unity Conference — are a major strength of the Labor Studies Center.
These leadership institutes focus on the self-defined needs of particular subsections of our population (women workers, Latina/o and African American workers) who are often underrepresented and without adequate access to labor issues education.
Click here for a description of the Amnesty project. These annual programs take place periodically throughout the year and have addressed concerns of the union community through workshop offerings such as:
- Basic Union Skills;
- Communication and Leadership Skills;
- Legal and Civil Rights in the Workplace;
- Organizing;
- Political Action and Strategy;
- Gender Relations in the Workplace;
- Privatization;
- Financial and Retirement Planning;
- Health and Safety; and
- Youth and Unions.
Teaching methods utilized in these programs stress active learning through participation so that knowledge is retained.
