What can labor organizations do to promote teaching about the labor movement in our schools?

The California Federation of Teachers, AFT, AFL-CIO, has created a comprehensive program (and useful model), led by its Labor in the Schools Committee,  which helps teachers reach students with information about the history and current place of the labor movement in American democracy. Their program includes development of lesson plans on labor across all subject matter areas and grade levels; periodically updating a clearinghouse of K-12 curricular materials and labor education activities; conducting workshops for teachers and unionists; and tracking public education policy about labor.

Among its most popular resources is the Collective Bargaining Project that utilizes a simulation/role play method to engage students in an exercise to understand union organizing and collective bargaining and how labor and management resolve workplace conflicts.

The CFT committee also spearheaded the production of Golden Lands, Working Hands, a ten-part, three hour video series, which introduces students, union members and the general public to California labor history.

At CFT’s urging, a Speaker’s Commission on Labor Education was created in 2001. It helps students understand the role of the labor movement in history and contemporary society. Its projects include legislation, exhibits and supplementary Social Studies curricula approved by the California Department of Education.

The CFT Labor in the Schools Committee has also produced curricula for students at all levels from pre-school coloring books to college readings. They include elementary publications such as I, Tomato, The Yummy Pizza Company, Trouble in the Hen House: A Puppet Show and others. Click here for a complete list and ordering information.

The CFT web site also includes a section on K-12 Labor Education Links and a California Labor History Map that can be ordered from the California Federation of Teachers for $6.

The CFT has been successful in promoting passage of a law signed by Governor Jerry Brown designating May as Labor History Month. Governor Brown has also issued a proclamation “to commemorate this month with appropriate educational exercises that make pupils aware of the role labor has played in shaping California and the United States.”

For additional information, contact: Chair, Labor in the Schools Committee, CFT, 1330 Broadway, Suite 1601, Oakland, CA 94546 or call (510) 523-5238.

Click here for order form

Additional information is available at the Bread and Roses Heritage Committee. They memorialize the event every Labor Day with a variety of music and dance, poetry and drama, ethnic food, historical demonstrations, and walking and trolley tours from Lawrence’s Common. The Bread and Roses Labor Day Heritage Festival will be held on September 3, 2012 from 12 to 6pm.

“Collective Voices,” a 21-minute documentary about the famous 1912 Lawrence textile strike, is available in DVD for $12 and VHS for $9 from the Friends of Lawrence Heritage State Park or may be viewed online at the Massachusetts AFL-CIO web site.

The famous “Bread & Roses” song by James Oppenheim and sung by Teresa Healy and Tom Juravich, along with printed lyrics, is available from Union Songs

Teachers are encouraged to urge their students to use the Bread & Roses centennial for a project entry in the National History Day contest whose theme this year is “Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History.” The entry should be submitted under the Special Category of American Labor History. The American Labor Studies Center sponsors a Gold Medal and $1000 prize to the winner in this category.

Read the full report here: American Labor in US History Textbooks

From The Albert Shanker Institute.

Click Here to Read More about The Global State of Workers’ Rights: Free Labor in a Hostile World.

RSVP American Labor Studies Center: americanlaborstudies@gmail.com.

The Review

(http://labor-studies.org/pdfs/If-You-Dont-Come-in-on-Sunday.pdf)

Order Information

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MEI Publishing Inc.
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Phone: (718)548-4200
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URL: www.meipublishing.com/labor

Available on DVD Running time 60 minutes

The Inheritance

The Review

This documentary was made for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (ACWA) in 1964. The union was formed in the early 1900s by immigrant workers — Jewish, Italian, Eastern European, etc. The movie documents their early efforts to win a union, the events of the Depression and the New Deal, World War II. It ends with the 1963 civil rights march on Washington , linking the struggles of the union with those of the civil rights movements. Old newsreel footage and folk songs by Pete Seeger and others are included to explain the political and historical changes of the time. Along with If You Don’t Come in on Sunday, Don’t Come in on Monday, it is an excellent film to show as part of a lesson on American labor history.

Order Information

Available from the Labor Heritage Foundation for $39.20

(http://store.laborheritage.org/theinheritance-dvd.aspx)