Labor Education Program
Online Course Listings
See Calendar for Current Course Schedule
For Current course listings Univeristy of Illinois sutdents check Banner and all other students check academic outreach.
FALL 2009
Semester-long courses begin August 24 and end December 9
2nd eight week courses begin October 19 and end December 9.
SPRING 2010
Semester-long courses begin January 19 and end May 5
2nd eight week courses begin March 15 and end May 5
SUMMER 2010
Dates not yet available
Further information on the academic calendar is available here.
LER 100 Introduction to Labor Studies
Also offered as a 2nd eight weeks course
The course provides an overview of workers and unions in American society. Looks at economic, political, and workplace issues facing working people, why and how workers join unions, how unions are structured and function, and how unions and management bargain a contract. Provides a historical overview of the American labor movement, and discusses the contemporary struggles workers and unions face in a rapidly changing global economy.
LER 110 Labor and Social Movements
Also offered as a 2nd eight weeks course
This is an introductory course which explores the role of labor unions in American society. The course discusses the role of labor unions in initiating actions on social issues that impact the U.S. working class, the economy, public policy, and politics. The course will analyze the labor movement’s interaction with the civil rights, women’s, student, global justice, and living wage movements.
LER 120 Contemporary Labor Problems
Also offered as a 2nd eight weeks course
This course focuses on problems and challenges facing American workers and the U.S. labor movement. Topics include the deterioration of the labor-management “social contract” in recent decades; a review of labor and employment law; the health care crisis; globalization and cross-border union alliances; and union democracy.
LER 130 Introduction to Labor and Working Class History
Do working people have a history worth studying? What does the history of the U.S. look like when viewed from the point of view of those who built the country? The course introduces students to U.S. labor and working class history. This class will examine the conditions of life and work of the various groups of working people: enslaved, indentured, small farmers, but especially wage workers and their families from the Civil War to the present. We will study the main collective actions workers have taken to protect and improve their lives and the organizations and social movements they created to do this.
LER 200 Globalization and Workers
Is globalization good for working people in the United States and around the world? Globalization is the driving force in the world economy but it is also provoking tremendous debate and popular resistance. Students will learn the basics about globalization and its institutions from the perspective of workers' right in the U.S. and the Third World. Analyzes the debate over free trade and sweatshops, trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, and institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund. Closely examines working conditions in several Third World countries, and explores the role of the global justice movement.
LER 210 Images of Labor in Film (pending approval)
This course
will use feature-length films to take an in-depth look at key labor strikes and
organizing drives from the 1910s through the 1980s. Students will view some of
the most powerful films on worker and labor themes ever produced. The course
will study the work lives and labor unions of miners; railroad porters;
packinghouse workers; textile workers; and farm workers. We will discuss the
meaning of the events depicted in the films by situating them in historical
context with detailed readings; engage the debates raised in the films about
labor organizing methods and strike strategies that are relevant to today’s
labor movement; reflect on issues of race, gender, class consciousness, working
conditions, union goals, anti-communism, and labor-management relations raised
in the films and readings; analyze how effectively the films, and Hollywood in
general, portray workers and unions; and compare and contrast the films.
LER 220 The Media, Workers, and Unions
This is a course about workers, unions, and how the news media tells their stories. It will look at the past, the present, and future. It will analyze how these stories are told in the mainstream and independent news media in the U.S., and it will examine the Internet’s explosion and impact on these stories. We will look at how blogs, online videos, citizen journalism, and the fast changing world of Internet communication has given voice to workers and their issues. We will compare the print and online media with the work done in documentaries and the cinema. In addition we will look at the global telling of these stories. Lastly, we will examine the ways that unions can better tell their stories.
LER 250 Grievance Representation
Offered every fall semester
This is a practical course that examines how a union steward represents workers on the job, including how to investigate, write, and negotiate grievances; and how to utilize labor law to defend workers’ rights on the job. Students work collectively to discuss how to resolve labor-management conflicts in case studies on insubordination, absenteeism, vacation, overtime, safety, and racial and sexual harassment grievances.
LER 260 Union Organizing
Offered every spring semester
The course will provide an in-depth understanding of how to organize a union. The first half of the course will review union organizing methods and labor law. The second half of the course will analyze debates over innovative strategies, best practices, and theories of union organizing. The course covers skills and theoretical analyses that are applicable for community, student, or social movement organizers.
LER 300 Workers, Unions and Politics
Offered every spring semester
What is the meaning and impact of politics seen from the perspective of those at the bottom of the pyramid of political power rather than the usual focus on the actions and perceptions of political elites? In what ways do workers become involved in politics? Under what circumstances are they likely to be successful in bringing about change? The course explores political power, political participation, and political change from a broad historical and cross-cultural perspective, but always focusing on a view of politics from the bottom up. Analyzes the political economy of labor and the labor movement’s political influence in politics. Prerequisite: Students should have taken a 100-level GLS course, or a course that discusses political issues.
LER 320 Gender, Race, Class and Work
This course provides a historical and contemporary overview of the impact and interplay of gender, race, class and other issues of identity in the workplace. The history of women, people of color and working class individuals in the workplace will be addressed. Contemporary issues of discrimination in the workplace will be examined including: the pay gap, occupational segregation and workplace harassment. In addition, the course surveys the remedies for dealing with workplace discrimination, with particular attention to employment discrimination laws. The particular challenges faced by those doing low wage work will also be explored. Finally, the course covers the response of labor unions to the issues of women, people of color, immigrants and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals. Prerequisite: Students should have taken a 100-level GLS course, or a course that discusses race or gender issues.
LER 330 Comparative Labor Relations and Union Movements Offered every fall semester
This course is designed to be an overview of comparative labor movements and labor relation systems. In this course we will develop a framework for understanding union formation and the development of industrial relations system in a variety of countries around the world. An emphasis will be placed on each country's interaction between unions and political organizations, national labor policies, the machinery for the resolution of workplace problems, the level of shop floor disturbances, bargaining coverage of employees, and the issues of workers’ control. The course will also address how globalization has transformed the capacity of any nation's labor relations' system to respond to economic challenge and workplace conflict. It also examines the possibility of developing transnational unions.
NOTES
All courses are three credit hour University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
All courses are capped at 35 enrollments, except 300-level classes which are capped at 28 enrollments.
Multiple sections of most courses are offered. If one section is full, try another section.
Summer classes: LER 100, 110, and 120 (8 weeks); and LER 130 and 200 (12 weeks)