Teachers Work to Revive Labor Education

by Stephanie Tate

If you don't know the answers to these questions you're not alone.

"We don't have labor studies in schools," said Mary Ellen Cardella, a secondary teacher at Middle College High School. "How can you possibly teach American history to our students in public schools without labor history?" She wanted to get labor issues back into the curriculum, but wasn't sure how to do it.

Other teachers felt the same way.

"There is a glaring lack of labor history taught in high school," said Fred Yudin, a teacher at Ingraham High School. "History studies only focus on the leaders - the chiefs - without mentioning anything about working-class people. Students read the texts and don't see themselves or their families represented."

After Cardella discussed possible ways to combat this problem with Charles Bergquist, chairholder of the Bridges Chair at the Center for Labor Studies at the University of Washington, and Michael Honey from the University's Tacoma Branch, they decided to organize two labor studies seminars for high school teachers.

In the first seminar, three speakers - one per quarter - gave lectures and led discussions on various topics. These day-long events, each of which drew 25 to 35 teachers, covered the history of the Chicano working class in the Southwest; efforts to unionize Chicano mine workers; and Pacific Northwest Asian American labor history.

The aim of these seminars was to educate high school teachers about labor issues, and to discuss ways to bring it into the curriculum. The series focused on events in the Western U.S. in order to make the information more relevant to students.

"The information covered was great, up-to-date material," Yudin said. "Also, it brought together a diverse group of people to learn about crucial issues."

Cardella was also concerned with multi-culturalism, and saw labor and race issues as intimately linked. She noticed that multiculturalism is often taught on the side instead of being integrated into the curriculum. "I wanted to link labor issues and ethnic studies because the labor movement ties into basic issues of democracy and economic justice," Cardella said.

The second seminar was a two-and-a-half day conference held at the UW in May of this year called Workers in the Global Economy. This program covered current theory on global economic change, and its effects on workers' lives. Speakers also discussed and debated efforts by unions to improve working conditions for workers in an economy made up of increasingly footloose corporations. Some teachers even brought some of their students.

"I think labor studies are important in all areas of education because everybody has to work," said Bebette Cazelais, a teacher at Roosevelt High School, and participant in the seminar.

The seminars were sponsored by the UW's Center for Labor Studies. Currently, the center works closely with the history, sociology and political science departments, offering specialized classes for undergraduate and graduate students. They plan to start a new program this fall with the sociology department called "Introduction to Labor Studies" that will allow students to earn a minor in labor studies.

"Even though most University of Washington students are not fired up to find a course on labor, they begin to get interested once they start learning about these issues because they've experienced them in their daily lives," Bergquist said.

The center opened in 1992 as an endowment to the University of Washington in honor of Harry Bridges, who led the West Coast waterfront workers strike in 1934 after forming the International Longshoremen's and Warehouseman's Union (ILWU), and turned the union into one of the strongest forces for protecting workers on the West Coast.

Bridges was president of the ILWU from 1936 to 1975. When he died in 1990, supporters raised over $1 million to fund the endowment. The Bridges Chair was funded substantially by pensioners from the ILWU, making it the first university chair in the country endowed by workers.

This year, the Labor Center plans to continue its effort to get labor issues into the schools. The center will hold another series of seminars this year which will further explore the topic of labor in the global economy.

For more information, call the UW Center for Labor Studies at (206) 543-6924.

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Contents on this page were published in the October/November, 1995 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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