Labor Union Blog

St. Louis is the most recent municipality to turn to unpaid furloughs in order to bridge a budget gap. On Friday, the Arch City’s Board of Aldermen approved a measure that will require 4000 city workers to take 40 hours of time off without pay. Workers will be required to do so by the end of the fiscal year on June 30, 2010. According to the mayor’s office the measure will preserve 70 city jobs. St. Louis is attempting to heal a $10 million budget hole.

The United Auto Workers will meet this week to nominate Vice President Bob King as the successor to President Ron Gettelfinger. According to sources, the labor union’s administrative caucus is expected to announce their support of King after a meeting on Wednesday. The UAW membership will vote for the new President in June, but the leadership’s nominee has typically easily won that vote. King led the negotiations with Ford during the recent downturn in auto sales.

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Lede: Financial regulation reform has begun to wind its way through Congress. Doug Cunningham has more.

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The National Labor College (NLC) is expanding educational opportunities to a new group of workers. The college signed an agreement with the College of Menominee Nation, a Native American tribal college with two campuses in Wisconsin.

The agreement makes it easier for students attending the tribal college to transfer up to 90 credits toward one of six labor studies majors at NLC.

Labor College President William Scheuerman says:

I am very pleased that the College of the Menominee Nation has joined our growing network of academic partnerships. All workers need to have access to higher education and there is a great need in our ever-changing workplaces for knowledge on how to deal with labor issues.

The NLC currently has more than 25 academic partnerships nationwide with community colleges and four-year college programs.

The College of Menominee Nation offers technical and trades diplomas in fields that include welding, electrical studies and sustainable residential building systems. The college also awards associate and bachelor’s degrees in more than a dozen academic fields.

Verna Fowler, president of the College of Menominee Nation, calls the new partnership agreement a positive step for both institutions.

Those who are preparing with us for the trades are high quality students and understand the changing demands of the workplace. We’re confident that these are men and women who won’t stop with their first job credentials, but will be interested in further learning in their fields. Our new agreement means that the coursework they do here with us will be applicable to the degree programs of our NLC partner.

With a 46-acre campus just outside Washington, D.C., the nation’s only labor college is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and grants bachelor’s and master’s degrees. The college evolved from the George Meany Center for Labor Studies, created in 1969, and now partners with the University of Baltimore and George Mason University for its graduate degree programs.

More than 1,200 union members have graduated from the NLC since 1998.