Founding Goals of the Labor Project

1) Increase by twenty the number of political science departments that offer a course on labor-related topics. To facilitate this, we are asking anyone who has already taught such a course to provide us a copy of their syllabus, so that interested faculty who want to establish a new course on their campus won't have to reinvent the wheel from scratch, but can pick and choose from a range of already existing course outlines. We will also ask that faculty currently teaching labor courses make themselves available by phone or email to consult with those just starting up new courses who may want advice on how things have worked in the past.

2) Enable more political science faculty to sponsor campus teach-ins on the topic of labor rights in a human rights context. This is particularly timely because, for the first time in nearly thirty years, there is serious labor law reform legislation in Congress (the Employee Free Choice Act, now with over 200 sponsors in the House), and we believe political scientists are uniquely positioned to lead a discussion of democratic process in the workplace. We will be distributing handouts, powerpoint materials, and a sample agenda for teach-ins, and will have experienced faculty available to confer with others interested in setting up an event.

3) Identify labor-related topics that are appropriate for dissertation research. We will present a list of topics that are immediately relevant to national labor policy and politics. The national AFL-CIO has pledged that any graduate student who pursues one of these topics will be provided a contact person within the AFL-CIO to help them get access to information, interviews and archives, and to serve as an informal sounding board. We are of course interested in as broad a range of labor topics as possible, even beyond those particularly relevant to AFL-CIO policy issues. Whether the focus is mainly theoretical or applied, domestic or international, the point is to stimulate more dissertation research on labor-related issues.

4) Expand the number of labor-related panels at the 2005 APSA convention. We hope to have at least 5 whole panels dedicated to issues of labor politics and/or policies at next year's convention. Toward that end, we will ask the Chairs of the New Political Science, Human Rights, International Political Economy, Political Economy, Public Policy, Women and Politics, Comparative Politics, State Politics and Policy, and Comparative Democratization sections of APSA to allocate at least one panel each to a labor-oriented theme.

5) Publicize the current publishing outlets (books and journals) for those who write on labor topics and increase the publishing opportunities on this subject within political science.

6) Support graduate students who may have been blacklisted for union activity. With the increasing level of unionization among graduate students, there are a number of students who believe they may be blacklisted in retaliation for union activity on their own campuses. We will be asking faculty to volunteer to read the files and write a letter of recommendation for political science graduate students who have reason to fear they may be blacklisted on their own campuses.

Recent Accomplishments

APSA Responds to Our Call:

You may remember we have been making efforts to have the APSA Council adopt a stronger hotel policy relating to labor issues. We are proud to announce that the Annual Review Committee has recommended to the Council a policy that not only strengthens APSA's standard contract language to cancel in case of picket lines, but also for the first time puts in a union preference policy, that — all other things (e.g., costs) being equal— the organization will give preference to union hotels. (See below for their official recommendation.)  And — pleasant surprise — the survey of members conducted by the Annual Review Committee found strong majority support for the union preference policy (more details below). 

The APSA Council will be meeting during this year's meeting to vote on adopting or rejecting the committee's recommendations.  We have submitted a formal proposal to the Council that they adopt the recommendations, and that they also have APSA subscribe to INMEX (Informed Meeting Exchange), an organization with links to UNITE-HERE that provides the most advanced and reliable information on potential upcoming labor disputes.  It costs nothing to subscribe to INMEX, and subscribers do not commit themselves to being bound in any way on choice of hotel. We hope the Council will support this.

You may be curious to read how your political science colleagues feel about such a hotel policy. The Annual Review Committee conducted a survey about the conference. According to their report, posted at http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/AnnualMtgAttendeesSurvey.pdf, of the 6261 APSA members registered for the 2006 annual meeting, 2492 individuals completed the survey. There were two questions that addressed APSA policies toward labor disputes.

A majority, 57 percent, favored the APSA policy that allows it to withdraw for a contract in the case of a labor dispute, 13 percent opposed this policy, and 22 percent said “don’t know.”

A similar majority of 57 percent supported the APSA adopting a “union preference policy” meaning that if cost is not an issue it would prefer to use hotels that either have a union or have permitted fair union elections, 19 percent opposed this policy, and 17 percent said “unsure.”

As a result of our efforts and the committee’s own survey and research, they have recommended the following:

2. Union Preference Policy. APSA should adopt a slightly more rigorous policy to prefer union hotels and providers for its meetings.

a. Those responsible for negotiating and administering hotel and service contracts for the APSA Annual Meeting and any other meeting organized by the national Association shall make every effort to give preference to a suitable unionized hotel and/or service provider, cost considerations being otherwise equal.

b. Further, the standard contract language should be amended as indicated in bold below:

10.01 Performance

Neither party (hotel and APSA) shall be responsible for any failure of performance due to acts of God, war, government regulation, disaster, labor disputes and strikes, civil disorder, curtailment of transportation facilities, shortage of commodities or supplies to be furnished by the [name of hotel], or other emergencies making it inadvisable, illegal or impossible to provide the facilities or to hold the meeting in the hotel or city as originally planned. It is provided that this agreement may be terminated for any one or more of such reasons by written notice from one party to the other ADD: “without penalty or liability.”

[a] the Hotel shall provide APSA written notification of pending labor contract terminations or changes.

Rationale:

a. Although the Committee has received requests that we take more aggressive pro-labor stances, and despite the sympathy of a majority of members surveyed for such positions, as a professional association our position can only extend as far as the best interest of the profession. The current language makes it clear that “labor friendly” policies are preferable. Moreover, we felt any greater change in this policy was a matter for the Council, not for us.

b. The Association’s contract already includes force majeure clauses that permit the Association to terminate a contract in the event of a labor dispute. We have suggested a slight change in that language.

Behind the Scenes:

We are currently updating the Labor Project’s history and maintaining an archive on the hotel policy work we have done. Our webpage, hosted on the Caucus for New Political Science website, is being updated. We are still collecting syllabi on labor themes; please email them to maggiegray@hotmail.com if you have them. We apologize for their absence on our webpage and are working to get them back up there. We are also working on a petition to have political scientists show their support for the ECFA.