109 National Labor College Graduates Report to Front Lines—of Union Movement

by James Parks, Jun 25, 2007

The National Labor College Class of 2007 includes 109 students who have gained a bachelor’s or master’s degree.
Susan Schurman

It’s been said that an employer’s greatest fear is an educated union member. Today, there are 109 more educated union members ready to work for economic justice on the job.

These union leaders and members and staff from across the country received their degrees June 23 at the ninth annual National Labor College (NLC) commencement in Silver Spring, Md. 

The 2007 graduates received 91 Bachelor of Arts degrees and 18 master’s degrees through the NLC’s partnership programs with the University of Baltimore and the American University.

Ceremonies at the NLC campus featured keynote speaker Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who was awarded an honorary degree along with retiring NLC President Susan Schurman.

Several graduates received special honors, including Christopher J. Valverde, a member of the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) from San Jose, Calif., who won the Bert and Annabel Seidman Prize for advancing social policy. Valverde won the prize for a research paper on the failure of union members to vote in the best interests of themselves and their unions in national elections, despite knowledge that doing so could put their health care and secure futures at risk.  

Valverde surveyed 116 apprentices from SMWA Local 104 in the San Jose area. While 97 percent of those surveyed confirmed the importance of union membership in their lives and more than 80 percent of respondents value union political recommendations, less than 50 percent actually voted in the 2006 midterm elections. The study further suggested the importance that get-out-the-vote campaigns could have on enhancing the political involvement of apprentices. 

In addition to Valverde, students who were recognized for distinguished work included:

• Judy RaPue of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and David Russell from AFSCME for their study documenting the contributions of their mothers’ activism in founding their union locals.
•  Brad Wilson of the Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) for writing and producing a play for his senior project, Somewhere Between: An Imagined Autobiography, which shows the author’s love of history while revealing the awesome price some union leaders pay for their service;
• Carlos Ramos of the United Food and Commercial Workers and Arthur Hector Sr. of the Law Enforcement Supervisors’ Union of the Virgin Islands, who each received the President’s Award for overcoming extraordinary challenges in pursuit of their degrees. Ramos was hailed by his professors for his persistence in acquiring scholarly research techniques in the completion of his senior project paper; Hector was spotlighted for completing his paper while on active duty in Iraq where he currently is deployed.

In his address, Harkin said the union movement is facing unprecedented challenges:

During World War II, the graduates of West Point and Annapolis reported directly to the front lines; they went right into battle against the fascists in Europe and Asia. Similarly, the graduates here today will be reporting directly to the front line in the fight to lead and energize the labor movement in the United States.

Harkin illustrated the importance of unions in building a healthy middle class with the story of his brother, who worked for more than 20 years as a member of the UAW before his plant was sold to a union-busting owner that destroyed his livelihood.

And what does a 54-year-old deaf man do in a predicament like that? He got a job as a janitor at a shopping mall, working nights for minimum wage, with no benefits and no vacation time. It didn’t just destroy his livelihood; it broke his spirit.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said of Schurman, who has been NLC president since January 1997:

Under Sue’s leadership, the college created the degree program from which all of you are graduating. It won accreditation, and it completed this ambitious campus improvement program and raised the stature of labor’s college around our nation, and in fact around the world.  

Schurman, who bid a tearful farewell, said she was confident the college would continue to grow: 

The National Labor College is now a place where workers can come to better prepare themselves for the struggle for justice.   

The event was held indoors for the first time in the campus’s new Lane Kirkland Center.

More than 1,000 working men and women have earned degrees from the NLC, the nation’s only union-based college. The Labor College offers Bachelor of Arts degrees in seven major areas and more than 70 intensive, weeklong continuing education programs in union organizing, union building and leadership development. The college focuses on preparing union leaders through training sessions such as the leadership development program and the university accredited degree programs.

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