Labor Education Programs at LER
Community Partnerships
Building Bridges Project: The Building Bridges Project of the Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues graduated its third and final pre-apprenticeship class on September 24, 2008. These classes were supported by a $500,000 grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. Of the 36 participants originally admitted into the three classes, 29 are now indentured into the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. This is a program, which is also a project of the Labor Education Program, is designed to increase the minority membership of building trades unions. An initiative of the Chicago Interfaith Committee on Workers Issues. The purpose of this project is to bring together clergy and building trades leadership to provide training and identify job for the community. Also to increasing the community’s knowledge of and access to building trades apprenticeship programs and encourage local construction projects to use union labor that guarantees prevailing wages, family benefits and safe working conditions.
The program trains individuals throughout different parts of the community to prepare to apply and take tests for various Building Trades construction apprenticeship programs. These trainings are held at different local churches that act as host sites for the training during different times throughout the year.
The goal is to open as many opportunities for people as possible for careers in good paying jobs, especially for low wage workers, minorities, and women. Also, to teach the religious community how to organize and stand up for the rights of workers.
Center for Working Class Studies: The mission of the Chicago Center for Working-Class Studies (CCWCS) is to bring together individuals from multiple institutions to promote economic justice and to address class relationships. CCWCS’ participants are guided by their commitment to strengthen the political, economic and moral power of working women and men, and to expand an understanding of how other identities intersect with class, including race, gender and sexuality. The Center focuses on the following five types of activities: Cultural, Educational, Research, Community Organizing, and Union Organizing.
The Chicago-Area Committee on Occupational Safety and Health: (CACOSH) The Chicago Area Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, is committed to protecting the rights and safety of Illinois workers, whether they are union workers or the unorganized. The Health and Safety movement rose out of the classic Union philosophy of workers’ solidarity, that “An Injury to One is an Injury to All.” Those who study workers’ rights, and who work in environmental, health and safety fields, occupational medicine, or labor law are in a powerful position to fight for the protection of all workers.
Through teaching, through organizing, through networking, and through multidisciplinary collaboration, CACOSH strives to be an advocate for the health and safety of the working class of the greater Chicago metropolitan area.
If you would like to volunteer your time or expertise to help CACOSH, or if you have an environmental, health, or safety concern and would like to ask for help from CACOSH, please visit the CACOSH website.
Chicago Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor (Chicago COCAL) is a regional network of non-tenure track ("contingent") college teachers whose goals are to gain equality in the workplace for the now-majority contingent college teachers, numbering over 30,000 in the Chicago area. In cooperation with faculty unions, students, and other groups, COCAL assists in organizing, publicizes the issue of the threat to higher education represented by the casualization of the faculty, and acts as an information clearing house through its website and email updates. I part of the national COCAL network which sponsors the biennial international Conferences on Contingent Academic Labor (COCAL VIII in 2008 in San Diego <cocal-ca-org>) and Campus Equity Week activities. Chicago COCAL in 2008 also published "Access to Unemployment Benefits for Contingent Faculty".
Labor in Illinois Labor News Service Labor in Illinois is a web-based news and information service sponsored by the University of Illinois Library and the Labor Education Program. It publishes labor news from around the state and also lists other sources of information. It also can be subscribed to as RSS feed direct to you computer each week.
Labor Research Portal (coming soon) While physical access to UIUC's library materials generally is restricted to current UIUC students, faculty, and researchers, the Labor Research Portal will enable both members of the UIUC community and users everywhere to discover works in the UIUC collection as well as Internet resources related to labor and employment relations. As for Internet resources, users will be able to find key Web-based resources organized into major categories of labor and employment relations. For instance, users will be able to find information on such topics as labor movement, statistics, labor law, and collective bargaining agreements. Under each category, the resources will be presented by their creators such as government agencies, academic institutions, or not-for-profit organizations. Our efforts of filtering the millions of labor-related Web pages and organizing them into categories will bring about the maximum awareness of existence the information contained in those resources.
Labor Studies Club Open to students and non-students in the Urbana-Champaign area. The Labor Studies Club provides an introduction to the labor movement through discussions, films, field trips and labor history tours, and opportunities for direct union involvement such as internships.