The Albert Shanker Institute-Labor Page

Intelligence, Knowledge, and the Hand/Brain Divide
In this article, Mike Rose, the author of The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker, argues that the academic/vocational divide that persists in U.S. schools today is not simply a matter of curriculum. It is an expression of belief about intelligence and the social order that continue to limit the options of large numbers of young people.

Thrive: The Skills Imperative
This Council on Competitive-ness report analyzes the future challenges and opportunities for skilled work in the U.S. The report finds that slowing growth in the U.S. workforce has the potential to slow economic out-put if productivity does not in-crease. Lack of adequate read-ing and math skills among new workers compound the prob-lem. At the same time, hun-dreds of millions of educated foreign workers are entering the global workforce and competing for jobs that are increasingly vulnerable to off-shoring. (Requires Adobe Acrobat)

The Future for Unions
This paper describes a new trend towards growth—not just a halt in decline—for British unions. Union members are increasingly professionals or paraprofessionals and likely to be better educated than the rest of the workforce. These are widespread trends and not due simply to greater union density in the public sector. Author Tom Wilson argues that in such an environment, union promotion of a skills agenda will be more important that ever to union success and points to the growth of the “union learning representative” (ULR) program as an indicator of demand for skills training. The ULR program has been an important focus of interest for the Shanker Institute. (Requires Adobe Acrobat)

Wanted: Skilled Factory Workers
U.S. manufacturers, regardless of size, specialty or location, "are reporting a dire shortage of skilled workers: people such as welders, electricians or machinists with a craft that goes beyond pushing buttons or stacking boxes but does not require a degree. That shortage is threatening their ability to meet current demand, let alone expand their businesses. The gap could threaten the viability of the U.S. manufacturing sector at a time when it is facing heavy competition from abroad."

Freelancers of the World, Unite!
Sara Horowitz, founder of the Freelancers Union, contends that a union is a means for workers to join together to solve problems. In order to reach this goal, unions need to be “independent of government, employers and other institutions.” The Union is focused on providing health care, education and advocacy services. Its next project is portable pensions.

Serious Players in Learning
Trade unions in the U.K. are engaged in a battle “to expand the minds of workers,” the social and economic importance of which has been recognized the government, which now helps to fund union learning initiatives. Despite the success of these programs, employer resistance lingers.

Unionizing White-Collar Workers
With wages stagnating nationwide, economic anxiety has hit not just the low-wage workers who usually feel the brunt of economic uncertainty. It's also affecting highly skilled professionals.

What China Needs Now: Unions
The U.S. trade gap with China is booming, and steps like revaluing the Chinese currency won't help. What we really need is for Chinese workers to earn more.

Who Speaks for Employees? It's Certainly Not Management
As the union voice has become weaker, this democracy of ours has become more fragile. Employees who believe that they don't need a collective voice are just wrong, based on the record. Democracies suffer when there is an absence of countervailing power in the society. That is where we are now.

Half the World's Workers Denied Fundamental Rights
A May 2004 report by the International Labor Organization showed that the rights to freedom of association and to bargain collectively are not guaranteed to half of the world's workers. The report also in-cludes a sampling of worker rights abuses around the world.

Learning to Organize
This pamphlet from the British labor movement places training and skills development at the center of a campaign to reinvigorate unions. Providing workers with the skills they need for the new economy, it argues, makes unions more valuable to their members, business and the economy as a whole. (Requires Adobe Acrobat)

Professional Workers Joining Unions in Record Numbers
A record number of professional and technical workers are joining unions—nearly 30 percent of all new union members, according to this AFL-CIO report, Rising Tide: Professionals, The New Face of America’s Unions. (Requires Adobe Acrobat)

Changing Courses
A new report examines the instructional innovations that can help low-income workers succeed in community college.

World Bank: Unions Are Good for World Economies
Despite the World Bank's historic antipathy toward labor, this 2003 report finds that both workers and their nations' economies benefit from high unionization rates. Workers gain from higher wages, shorter working hours, and more training, as compared to their nonunion counterparts. Economies gain from lower unemployment and inflation rates, higher productivity, and faster adjustment to economic shocks.
&Read this report. (Requires Adobe Acrobat)

The Next Crisis: Too Few Workers
Even as the US economy struggles and unemployment climbs, demographers have begun to talk about a looming skills shortage. No kidding. Here's what the experts say.

Globalization and Its Discontents
A thoughtful review of Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stigletz's recent book, which argues that mistaken IMF and World Bank policies may worsen the plight of developing nations.

Working Man Blues
A self-proclaimed "worker's paradise," how will China's rulers deal with growing (and increasingly organized) worker unrest?

At a time when some forecast a declining role for unions, growing numbers of professional, technical, and contingent workers are joining union ranks. These men and women are gaining an increasingly influential voice in the workplace and within the labor movement. Through this new voice, they are also attempting to address many of the larger issues affecting workers in the new economy. These issues—including a desire to improve the quality of their work, the need to keep pace with changing technologies and a globalizing economy, workplace flexibility, threats to professional autonomy, and the wish to work collaboratively with employers—go far beyond traditional union concerns. The Albert Shanker Institute promotes discussions and sponsors research to explore new structures, services, and roles for unions as they work to meet these challenges. The following are among these efforts:

Experts Debate the Role of Career and Technical Education

Education reform will fail a vast number of U.S. students unless the role of career and technical education (CTE, formerly called vocational education) is reconsidered, recast and placed in the mainstream of K-12 curriculum design. These were some of the conclusions of a small group of top federal and state policymakers, educators, business and labor leaders, practitioners, researchers and other workforce experts who took part in an informal conversation on Feb. 17, 2010, hosted by AFT president Randi Weingarten and sponsored by the Albert Shanker Institute.

&See a description of the event

&Read the full list of participants

Workforce Development Study Trips to the U.K.

To further support interest in the innovative union models, and specifically the British "union learning representative" model within the AFT, the Institute organized two U.K. study trips for AFT leaders, one in May 2006, led by AFT and Shanker Institute Secretary-Treasurer Nat LaCour, and the second in April 2007, led by AFT and Shanker Institute President Ed McElroy and AFT Executive Vice President Toni Cortese. The groups met with three major teacher unions and other unions representing public employees and civil servants, as well as the head of one of the many community college partners, staff from the TUC training branch of a community college and its head, communications and technology professionals, bus drivers, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber, and members of his “UnionLearn” staff team. By the middle of 2007, representatives of every constituency in the AFT had benefited from a first-hand view of the British labor movement’s learning initiatives. The groups found a labor movement deeply committed to a learning agenda that helps unions reach and attract members by giving them on-the-job educational supports and that holds a special appeal for younger members, ethnic minorities, and women—groups that have historically been under-represented among the ranks of union activists. British labor leaders reported that workers are more likely to join and become more engaged with unions when they offer concrete assistance with further education, career development and job training. They also reported that the focus on learning has given a "new face" to unionism, helping to improve the public’s perception of unions and attract new members. One result of these efforts is that AFT affiliates in Baltimore, MD, the state of Rhode Island, and North Suburban, IL, are working to launch new pilot programs that build on the British learning representative model.

& Click here to learn more about the TUC's UnionLearn program.

Union Presidents Discuss New Models for Labor Organizations
On March 15-16, 2006, the Albert Shanker Institute and the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees (DPE) hosted a seminar for union presidents and senior staff, which focused on new models for union organization in response to the changing nature and needs of today’s workforce. Representatives from 11 unions attended the seminar, including six international union presidents. Chaired by Shanker Institute and AFT president and DPE chairman Ed McElroy, the seminar featured presentations by Lynn Karoly (RAND Corporation), Richard Hurd (Cornell University), Tom Wilson (the British Trades Union Congress) and Pete diCicco (Kaiser Permanente Coalition). Among the topics discussed were the effects of union-sponsored professional development and skills training programs on labor organizing, possible “lessons learned” from professional associations, and the obstacles and possibilities for representing workers in non-traditional employment relationships. A working group has been established by DPE to explore next steps.

Organizing Professionals in the 21st Century
The Albert Shanker Institute collaborated with the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees (DPE) on a March 14-16, 2005 national conference on organizing professional and technical workers. The labor movement needs to figure out how to design new organizations that relate to the needs of these workers, rather than "stuffing them into a box we've already created," Ed McElroy, president of the AFT and the Shanker Institute, told attendees. The capacity crowd included more than 200 participants, speakers, panelists, moderators and facilitators from more than 20 national unions—organizers, decision-makers, and staff, national and local—plus university-based academics and representatives of diverse organizations including professional associations and contingent workers. The program included the release of provocative new research: trends and projections affecting work and the workforce; surveys of unorganized registered nurses, higher education faculty in state universities, and information technology professionals that reported their responses to unprecedented questions; the intersection of women and the organizing of professional and technical units; and lessons from the Kaiser Permanente Coalition of Unions, where inter-union cooperation and aggressive union action foster massively successful organizing, and from fast-growing professional associations.

& Click here to see the program and conference materials.
& Read an article about the conference, "A Judge in a Union? New Roles for Labor."

Lane Kirkland: Champion of American Labor
On Feb. 9, 2005, the Albert Shanker Institute, Freedom House, and the National Endowment for Democracy co-sponsored a book launch for a new biography of former AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland. Lane Kirkland: Champion of American Labor was written by Arch Puddington, Freedom House’s director of research, with a grant from the Shanker Institute. Among those who spoke at the event were New York Times columnist William Safire, U.S. Representative and former House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt (D-MO), AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, former AFL-CIO President Thomas R. Donahue, who served as the organization’s secretary-treasurer under Kirkland, and Kirkland’s widow, Irena Kirkland. Lech Walesa, founder of Solidarity and former president of Poland, sent a written tribute, both to Kirkland and Puddington: "This book tells the story of one of the true heroes of the struggle for freedom from totalitarianism. Through the skillful use of the power he exercised as the leader of American labor, and through his own unshakeable commitment, Lane Kirkland played a crucial role in our peaceful revolution in Poland. He did much more. Throughout the world, millions of free people owe him a debt of gratitude for his service to the democratic cause. I am gratified that the full account of his indispensable contribution to freedom has finally been written."

& Click here to order a copy of Lane Kirkland: Champion of American Labor (Arch Puddington; Wiley, January 2005; ISBN: 0471416940).

New Workplace Partnership Needed for Skills that Keep
Jobs in America
On April 20, 2004, the Task Force on Workforce Development, a group of labor, business and policy experts co-sponsored by the Albert Shanker Institute and New Economy Information Service, issued a new report that calls for far-reaching changes in the way our country manages its work-force skills and training efforts. The report argues that, as technological change and global competition buffet our labor markets, the U.S. needs to do far more to help incumbent workers keep their jobs and prepare for new, high-skilled employment opportunities. While acknowledging several recent proposals to improve workforce skills, the report also says that "political leadership on all sides has yet to give adequate attention to this challenge." In addition, “labor must now consider its traditional role in training and credentialing workers as one of the major missions of the modern labor movement,” said Morton Bahr, president of the Communication Workers of America and task force co-chair.

& Read the press release.
& Download a full copy of the report, Learning Partnerships: Strengthening American Jobs in the Global Economy. (Requires free download of Adobe Acrobat Reader.)

Task Force on Labor and Workforce Development
On June 3, 2003, the Albert Shanker Institute and New Economy Information Service co-hosted the inaugural meeting of a task force on the problems and opportunities posed by recent demographic projections of an emerging shortage of high-skilled U.S. workers. The task force, comprised of leaders from the labor, business, and public policy arenas, discussed a range of possible employer responses – including those who may opt to shift jobs overseas, those who may push for increased immigration levels, and those who might focus on expanded training opportunities for U.S. workers. The task force agreed that unions have a special role to play in the resolution of this problem, which could result in benefits for employers as well as workers and lead to a stronger labor movement. U.S. and international unions' historic role in improving the education, training, and productivity of workers was also discussed – efforts that have not been widely recognized in the U.S.

Head of British Trades Union Congress Speaks at Luncheon
On Jan. 3, 2003, the Albert Shanker Institute and the New Economy Information Service co-sponsored a luncheon discussion with John Monks, general secretary of Britain's Trades Union Congress (TUC), on the revitalization of the labor movement. An audience that included AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and a score of other union leaders and labor academics, listened as Monks described worker training initiatives by several TUC unions that have helped increase labor strength and membership in the UK. “In the long term,” said Monks, “skills and training are the future.” Morty Bahr, president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and a member of the ASI board of directors, introduced Monks and related his remarks to the U.S. context.

& Read a transcript of Monks’ remarks.

Seminar on Workforce Development
According to an interesting Financial Times article ("The futile war for talent," June 6, 2001), most corporations would be better off if they stopped raiding one another for superstar staff and concentrated on identifying and developing the talents of their current workforce. For their part, unions have a vested interest in helping members increase both the value and the quality of their work. Two discussions hosted by the Albert Shanker Institute explored the convergence of these interests. In 2001, the institute and the New Economy Information Service, organized a seminar for trade union leaders and researchers from the U.S. and several European countries to discuss union experiences with professional development as a service to members, a tool for organizing and a basis for improved labor-management relations. The institute also convened a small meeting of U.S. business representatives and U.S. and European labor leaders to discuss institute polling data on the attitudes and aspirations of professional and technical workers and to explore workforce development and other possible areas for improved cooperation.

& Download a description of the seminar.
& Click here to view a copy of the program.
& Read remarks by John Lloyd on a "partnership of skills."
& Read remarks by Jeff Grabelsky on the use of temporary workers.

Finding Their Voices/Professionals and Workforce Representation
A significant percentage of unorganized professionals would like to be represented in their workplaces by a union or some other type of "employee organization," say two new studies. The studies, which are issued in one publication, include a national poll of professional and technical employees, conducted by Guy Molyneaux of Peter D. Hart Research Associates, and an analysis of new workplace organizations, conducted by David Kusnet of the Economic Policy Institute. According to the reports, these workers are as concerned with the quality of the work they do as with the conditions under which they work, and want organizations that can respond in kind. This is true whether or not they classify such an organization as a "union." Copies of this publication are available for $10 each from the institute’s offices (including shipping and handling).

& Read the press release.
& Download the preface by AFT President Sandra Feldman. (Requires free download of Adobe Acrobat Reader.)

Professional Workers, Unions, and Associations: Affinities and Antipathies
This paper, by Richard Hurd, director of labor studies at Cornell University, explores the changing nature of professional work, examines the attitudes of professionals toward work and unionization, and analyzes the possibility of convergence between the roles and operations of unions and professional associations. It also offers thoughtful advice to those who seek to organize professional, technical, and paraprofessional workers.

& Download the full paper.

Last updated: June 13, 2008