Labor Education Programs at LER
Union Schools
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen Local Chairman’s Workshop
The Local Chairman’s Workshop takes place during Spring Break every year on the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana campus. It is attended by both experienced and new leaders of BLET locals. They have been coming here since 2004 to become educated in key areas of union leadership, such as the following.
- BLET Organizational Structure
- Functions & Duties of a Local Chairman
- Union Leadership Skills
- Claim & Grievance Handling
- Computer Skills
- Writing Skills
- Computer Arbitration Research
- Presentation of a mock grievance case.
It is a very intense week of learning for the individuals who attend. They are taught by both union representatives and by Labor Education Program faculty. They keep long hours; in addition to the days of classroom learning, they have one evening class in LER’s computer lab and one additional evening to come back and do further research.This is a national-level conference, drawing participants from every state in the nation. Since participation is limited to 25, there is a completely unique group every year. At the end of the week they hold a graduation dinner and reception, and it is always interesting to hear stories from “back home” at the final awards dinner.
Web site: http://www.ble.org (History From Wikipedia) The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE) was a labor union founded in Marshall, Michigan on May 8, 1863, as The Brotherhood of the Footboard; a year later, its name was changed to The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. It had members in the Eastern half of the United States and parts of Canada. It was the senior national labor organization in the United States, and North America’s oldest rail labor union. The BLE eventually merged with the Teamsters (in 2004) to become the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), a Division of the Rail Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT).
United Steel Worker Summer School (District 7)
Since the inception of the University of Illinois’ Labor Education Program, District #7 (Illinois and Indiana) of the United Steelworkers has held week long training schools on the Urbana-Champaign campus during the months of June and July. The schools are part of a sequenced four year educational program offered to individual members of USW locals within the geographical region. Over the past years the program has enrolled nearly 600 students each summer in four separate one-week long labor education programs. A brief description of the schedule of classes for summer, 2008 is listed below.
Afternoon Classes
First Year Students:
- Grievance Handlin g & Processing – Is it a grievance or a gripe? Rights and responsibilities under the grievance procedure.
Second, Third, and Fourth Year Students:
- Economics & Politics – Why we’re here and where we need to go.
- Trouble-Making: Keeping the Fires Burning – How you can motivate your own members to becoming a more dynamic workplace organization. Activities and techniques on revitalizing local unions will be discussed.
- Safety and Health on the Job – Will look into establishing an effective safety and health program in your local unit including joint labor-management health and safety committees. Will discuss your rights and responsibilities under OSHA and hazard recognition.
- Grievance Handling & Processing – Is it a grievance or a gripe? Rights and responsibilities under the grievance procedure.
- The Grievance Record & Procedures – Record-keeping and preparing for arbitration.
- Civil Rights – Discuss the application of various protective labor laws including Civil Rights Act. Learn how you can use the law to better represent union members.
- FMLA – Putting a new face to the Family and Medical Leave Act. Learn how you can use the law to better represent union members.
All-Day Scholarship Classes
- Hispanic Union Leadership (June 1–6): Classes are taught in Spanish. Dealing with: USW policies, Constitution, problem solving, and a basic overview of Local Union functions and committees. This group will be together all week.
- Safety & Health (June 8–13): This class will deal with building the union through Safety & Health.
- Trustee Training (June 8–13): This class is only for Local Union Trustees and held Monday thru Friday at the U of Illinois. The class is taught by International auditors and is designed to make you a better trustee of the local.
- Women of Steel (June 8–13): A program of the International to facilitate women’s entry into leadership positions in their local unions and their communities. Sessions will be held on grievance handling, collective bargaining, and communications with a particular emphasis on how these issues impact women workers. This group will be together all week.
- Raymond G. Pasnick Alumni Class (June 8–13): The alumni program for local union leaders who have completed the four year Summer Institute. Will be held Monday thru Friday.
- Communications (June 8–13): This class will deal with setting up Local Union News Letters, Web sites and an overview of communicating with your membership
- New Steelworkers Training (July 20–25): Principles of our union, our leadership, our history, and our future.
- Financial Officer Training (July 27–August 1): This class is only for Local Union Financial Officers (President, Financial Secretary, and Treasurer). The class is taught by International auditors. (And hopefully keep you out of jail)
- Collective Bargaining (July 27–August 1): Costing the contract, costing the contract proposal, art of negotiation and applicable Labor Laws.
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers School (District 6)
The Arbitration Institute has been taking place every year in early December at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus for over forty years. It is attended by IBEW business agents, business managers, international staff representatives and chief stewards. It is a very intensive course taught by University of Illinois professors and IBEW international representatives. Participants learn how to prepare and present arbitration cases. Topics covered include:
- Arbitration Preliminaries
- Discipline and Just Cause
- Arbitration Hearings
- Researching for Arbitration
- Evaluating Cases
- Principles of Contract Interpretation
- Arbitrability
- Presenting Evidence
- Direct and Cross Examination
- Preparing Opening Statements, Objections and Closing Statements
Time is also spent in the university computer lab engaging in online arbitration research. The four day-long course ends in an exciting presentation of a mock arbitration case, where each participant is assigned to either the labor or management team and has an opportunity to utilize and practice skills learned during the class. It is an extremely intense and fun learning experience that allows for a lot of interaction between participants and instructors.
Illinois Postal Worker Education School
Illinois Postal Workers Conference- Leaders of the Illinois Postal Workers Union and the Labor Education Program hold an annual three day education conference in January. Participants come from all over the state and are local presidents, stewards and executive board members. Plenary and workshops are taught by LEP staff and national and state Postal Worker Union Staff. Below is listed a brief sample of previous conference topics that have been addressed in plenary and workshop formats.
Plenaries
- Community Activism
- A Strategy Against Closing Post Offices
- Building a Stronger Postal Union
- Mobilizing the Membership
- An Economy that Works for All (political mobilization)
- Songs of Struggle, Songs of Protests (the music of worker resistance)
- Unions, Faith and Working Class Politics
- Interest Based Collective Bargaining
Workshops
- APWU SEARCH Program (computer based training)
- Basic Steward Training
- Defending Worker Justice Through Faith-Labor Coalitions
- Maintenance Division Issues
- Family Medical Leave Act Updates
- Labor History
- Media Representations of Labor
Illinois State Firefighter Arbitration School
The Associated Fire Fighters of Illinois hold two annual schools at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign.
The Grievance Arbitration Conference is held in the spring and is designed for beginners and veterans of grievance arbitration. Contract interpretation and discipline cases are discussed and taught through group based exercises. The program’s main feature is an actual discipline case, where participants engage in a simulated arbitration.
The Interest Arbitration Institute is held in the winter and is designed to benefit Illinois fire fighters of all levels of experience in collective bargaining from local union presidents, stewards and members of the bargaining committee. Topics include the duty to bargain under the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act; and the impasse provisions under Section 14 of the law. The class simulates collective bargaining and interest arbitration by using actual data from Illinois fire fighter collective bargaining agreements. Course participants are assigned to union and employer teams, and each team receives a packet of bargaining data to prepare for a simulated bargaining session. Participants are given a complex grid of data from 8-10 labor agreements, and must compare and contrast the data to information from a fictional CBA that applies to their employment. Throughout the class, the participants develop positions, negotiate competitively with a counterpart who has a incentive to keep contract costs low, and readjust their positions in light of data as to how they relate to other bargaining teams. Parties either settle, or present mock arbitration cases under the Final Offer provisions of Section 14.
AFSCME Summer School Council 31