by James Parks, Aug 10, 2007

Michelle Todescato-Douglass (front row, center) and Adrian Healy (second left in back row) were two of the 2007 Law Student Union Summer interns.

The next generation of labor lawyers spent this summer learning firsthand what it’s like to work on the front lines in an organizing campaign and the problems workers face when they try to form a union.

Nine law students spent 10 weeks as Law Student Union Summer interns working with  labor lawyers across the country. During the program, which ended Aug. 3, students were involved in community outreach, member mobilization, corporate research, legislative campaigns and general litigation, canvassing, planning and implementing solidarity-building activities and participating in meetings and home visits.

For Michelle Todescato-Douglass, her experience helping workers at a car wash in Los Angeles form a union with the United Steelworkers was eye-opening. The soon-to-be third-year student at the University of Pittsburgh Law School, says:

This was such a great opportunity. The car wash campaign is such a breakthrough in an untraditional industry. I learned about organizing and how important it is to bring workers together.

Todescato-Douglass says she attended meetings with the mainly immigrant workers and was deeply involved in drafting an agreement for binding arbitration in wage disputes at car washes.  

She has worked for law firms that represented management in her native Brazil, but Todescato-Douglass says that labor law is her passion.

By doing this, I can see the other side. This is better than sitting behind the desk. I’m helping real people. When you see people organize, it’s really amazing what they can accomplish. I really, really enjoy it.  

Todescato-Douglass’ experience is what the program is all about. And she’s not the only one who enjoyed it. Check out these comments from other interns:

 I loved the close contact that I had with the activists and organizers. This interaction gave me a unique opportunity to see what we were working so hard to achieve—respect for workers oppressed by these businesses. The painters were an incredibly warm group and a great union to spend the summer with. —Angela Kwallek, who worked with Painters and Allied Trades in Las Vegas   

Being a part of the movement this summer was so refreshing. I formed amazing relationships with the attorneys I worked with allowing me to get involved in so many different aspects of an issue or case. To me this was an opportunity of a lifetime. —Sumanth Bollepalli, an intern with Communications Workers of America (CWA) in New York City 

Adrian Healy, a law student at Northeastern University in Boston, says the union movement has always been important to him. Healy, who was an AFL-CIO Union Summer intern as an undergraduate, says the Law Student Union Summer program is “a perfect introduction to working in labor law.”

Healy worked with the general counsel’s office of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., helping employees at the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) join the union. He says:

By being able to interview the workers, I could keep a pulse on what was going on in the workplace. For any law student interested in organized labor at all, this is an excellent program. It’s certainly more exciting and engaging than doing some boring research.

The other interns worked with AFT, CWA, Operating Engineers,  UAW and the Washington Federation of State Employees/AFSCME. 

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