Back to School to Learn Labor History

by James Parks, Jan 5, 2009

This painting titled “In the Bucket” by Robin Gowen and other resources on the Labor Arts website are just one way to teach the next generation about labor history.

As children begin returning to school after the holidays, AFT is providing tools for educators to teach them things they ought to know about America’s labor history. A special section in the winter edition of American Educator, the union’s quarterly journal, focuses on the importance of including labor history in our classrooms.

With the key protections for workers unions have gained under attack, there is a greater need for the next generation to understand the real role of working men and women in building the nation and making it a better place, contributors to the journal say.

James Green, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, explains that learning about the role of working men and women shows students “the contributions that generations of union activists have made to building a nation and to democratizing and humanizing its often brutal workplaces.”

While their predecessors successfully fought for monumental changes that benefited all Americans (not just union members), such as passing the Social Security Act of 1935 and ending child labor, today’s union veterans can take pride in their own accomplishments. For example, they pushed for mine safety laws and workers’ compensation laws. They fought for the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Of course, their struggles included not only legislative activism, but also worksite organizing and pushing reluctant state officials, federal officials and judges to grant collective bargaining rights. And so, most of all, our elder workers hope young people will learn from labor history that individual workers can achieve some dignity if they assert their collective power.

You can read the articles in American Educator here. 

The section also includes guides to tools and resources for teaching labor history, such as:

• Hardball and Handshakes, a text that examines the relationship between employer and employee through the example of professional baseball. Developed by the American Labor Studies Center and the Baseball Hall of Fame, the unit focuses on collective bargaining and is geared toward high school and college students. 
• Labor Arts, a virtual museum displaying “the cultural artifacts of working people.” The site includes powerful images from labor history and culture, as well as works of art representing labor’s struggles using various media such as photography, painting and sculpture, and organizing paraphernalia including buttons, fliers and posters.
• American Labor Studies Center, which disseminates labor history and curricula. The center maintains a website, which features educational resources, such as a chronology of American labor history, information on the roles of women and African Americans in the labor movement, labor quotes and songs and information on child labor.
• The California Federation of Teachers (CFT) Labor in the Schools Committee maintains a website, www.cft.org/about/comm/labor, which features curricula and educational activities for elementary through high school students. Lesson plans, biographies of union leaders and photographs of children at work reflect the long struggle by unions to improve the lives of working people.

In the same issue, Fred Glass, CFT’s communications director, writes a primer for students on the need for strong unions in the 21st century. He summarizes the primer this way:

Some people interpret the decline of organized labor as if unions belong to the past, and have no role to play in the global economy of the 21st century. They point to the numbers and say that workers are choosing not to join unions anymore. The real picture is more complex and contradicts this view. Most workers would prefer to belong to unions if they could. But many are being prevented from joining, rather than choosing not to join. Unions remain the best guarantee of economic protection and political advocacy for workers. But as unions shrink, fewer people know what unions are, and do. And fewer remember what unions have to do with the prosperity of working people.

To learn more and check out the entire special section on labor history, click here.

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