13 years with unions

I spent 13 years of my career as a labor educator.   So, nu, what's that?

I came to West Virginia University Institute for Labor Studies July 1, 1979.  Fresh out of school with a masters' in Industrial Hygiene, I moved from Detroit to Morgantown.  We had a grant from OSHA to provide safety and health training to unions in WVa.  I was lucky enough that soon my boss at WVU, Dick Humphreys, saw the value of the program and put me in a hard money slot that opened up (and here I am today still a WVU faculty member in extension.!)

Labor schools have a long history.   Progressive social work schools (particularly Bryn Mawr) taught courses to workers back into the 1920's (I think) on how to improve their conditions, including skills in organizing and making their unions effective.   In the 1950's labor unions in about 16 states persuaded legislatures to create schools at land grant universities supporting the training of union leaders (paid and volunteer) in the skills they might need to be effective.  The argument went that universities train doctors, lawyers, businessmen, nurses, etc.   Unions also have a socially beneficial mission and so, they should be trained as well.   There is certainly an argument that a skillful and knowledgeable union is a better partner/antagonist than one that is "off the wall."   When I arrived at WVU, the right wing across the state (particularly the Wheeling newspaper) regularly went apoplectic that the state's flagship would train union members...."anti-American"

So what I actually did was arrange and teach local and statewide classes for union members.   Most participants were volunteer leaders of unions serving on safety committees.   One typical format would be to offer a class one night a week for six weeks in a region.   Workers from different unions in the area would show up.   Parkersburg was a big supporter of these classes.   Sometimes I would do the same six sessions for students from one union that wanted to train a group of people.   I remember traveling that first winter to Lewisburg to train laborers and hotel workers employed at the Greenbrier Hotel.   Some of those winter trips over the mountains were scary.   Those two unions were notable because they worked really well together.   We met in a bar/restaurant owned by the business agent for the laborers.   (His son was in culinary school, and sometimes showed up and made us some fantastic food.)

The content of the training had about equal portions of:
1. Learning technical health and safety stuff (including chemical exposure)
2. Learning legal rights under OSHA
3. Learning tactics and strategy.. how to prepare, how to mobilize support, etc.

I loved this work.  I was clearly from a different world than the students, but I probably was pretty successful based on showing up as who I was and not pretending to be someone else.   (I've seen faculty at WVU who come to West Virginia and try to "go local"...cowboy boots, pickup truck, etc.)   Of course I was very enthusiastic and that helped.

The students were incredible.   First of all they were in the class because they were hungry to learn.   (I believe we had a subset of students who came just because they had not had many other formal learning opportunities.)   Most were incredibly dedicated to their union work and spent untold hours at that work.   I learned quickly to leave lots of time in class for stories.   The stories were often touching, sad, and sometimes made me really mad.   Intelligent men and women in workplaces were often treated as children by bosses who were motivated by obsessive need to be one up from the hourly workers.   The stories I heard always made me a better teacher the next time around.

Over the years I developed a particular interest and a bunch of methods for teaching concepts that had to do with math:  risk, probability, epidemiology studies, dose response, etc.   Like many, the group had a fair amount of math phobia.  Over time I found successful ways to communicate understanding all these concepts.  I had students in summer schools analyzing epidemiology journal articles while understanding the limits of concepts like "not significant at p=.05."  When I talked about occupational disease, I always enjoyed spending a lot of time on the anatomy and physiology aspects.   That was partly because it was fun for me, but I believe it also lead to understanding rather than rote learning.

I did that work for 13 years.   In my mind's eye, I can see the faces of dedicated workers sitting in front of me.   I know (from intuition and from research) that we talked about in those classes was translated into action that likely saved lives and limbs.   Not bad!