Patrick Hill, Ph.D.
Online Technical Support/Advisor
Labor Studies Minor (the less restrictive minor) requires completion of 15 credits hours
- 6 credit hours in core courses (100-200 level Labor Studies courses, except L199, L290, and L299), to provide students with a foundation for further specialization in areas relevant to their individual career interests.
- 9 credit hours may be drawn from a broad range of additional Labor Studies courses, to be selected in consultation with Labor Studies faculty.
Labor Studies Minor for Liberal Arts requires 15 credits
Choose 6 credits from the following:
- LSTU-L 100 Survey of Unions and Collective Bargaining (3 cr.) This course includes coverage of historical development, labor law basics, and contemporary issues. It also discusses a survey of labor unions in the United States, focusing on their organization and their representational, economic, and political activities.
- LSTU-L 101 American Labor History (3 cr.) This course explores the struggles of working people to achieve dignity and security from social, economic, and political perspectives. It also explores a survey of the origin and development of unions and the labor movement from colonial times to the present.
- LSTU-L 110 Introduction to Labor Studies: Labor and Society (3 cr.) This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary and advocacy approach of labor studies. Exploring labor’s role in society, the class will look at how unions have changed the lives of working people and contributed to better social policies. Discussions will highlight the relationship of our work lives to our non-work lives and will look at U.S. labor relations in a comparative framework.
- LSTU-L 200 Survey of Employment Law (2 cr.) This course explores statutes and common-law actions protecting income, working conditions, and rights of workers. Topics include workers’ compensation, unemployment compensation, fair labor standards, Social Security, retirement income protection, and privacy and other rights.
- LSTU-L 201 Labor Law (3 cr.) This course reviews a survey of the law governing labor-management relations. Topics include the legal framework of collective bargaining, problems in the administration and enforcement of agreements, and protection of individual employee rights.
- LSTU-L 203 Labor and the Political System (3 cr.) This course examines federal, state, and local governmental effects on workers, unions, and labor-management relations; political goals; influences on union choices of strategies and modes of political participation, past and present; relationships with community and other groups.
- LSTU-L 205 Contemporary Labor Problems (3 cr.) This course examines some of the major problems confronting society, workers, and the labor movement. Topics may include automation, unemployment, international trade, environmental problems, minority and women’s rights, community relations, and changing government policies.
- LSTU-L 230 Labor and the Economy (3 cr.) This course analyses aspects of the political economy of labor and the role of organized labor within it. It emphases the effect on workers, unions, collective bargaining of unemployment, investment policy, changes in technology and corporate structure. It also explores patterns of union political and bargaining responses.
Choose 9 credits from the following:
- LSTU-L 314 Ethical Dilemmas in the Workplace (3 cr.) This courses explores the ethical decision-making and behavior in a unionized workplace, based on the values and social justice mission of unions. Students will examine what constitutes ethical standards on issues such as affirmative action, transparency, membership involvement, and democratic procedures. This includes the philosophical and theoretical bases for ethics and discussions on the relationship between law and ethics in dealing with workplace conflict.
- LSTU-L 315 The Organization of Work (3 cr.) This course examines how work is organized and how jobs are evaluated, measured, and controlled. It explores social and technical elements of work through theories of scientific management, the human relations school of management, and contemporary labor process literature.
- LSTU-L 380 Theories of the Labor Movement (3 cr.) This course examines various perspectives on the origin, development, and goals of organized labor. Theories include those that view the labor movement as a business union institution, an agent for social reform, a revolutionary force, a psychological reaction to industrialization, a moral force, and an unnecessary intrusion.
- LSTU-L 385 Class, Race, Gender, and Work (3 cr.) This course provides a historical overview of the impact and interplay of class, race, and gender on shaping U.S. labor markets, organizations, and policies. It examines union responses and strategies for addressing class, race, and gender issues.
- LSTU-L 390 Strikes: Labor Revolt in America (1 cr.) Most people in society face a common problem: they must work for someone else to make a living. The best hours of their lives are spent in meeting their employers’ requirements. The results of their labors may sometimes correspond to their own social needs—but their work is just as likely to destroy their own social and natural environment, make their work-time still more onerous, and increase their subordination. This creates continuous conflict between workers, on the one hand, and employers and those who support them, on the other. At times over the course of U.S. history, that struggle has resulted in visible, violent, and dramatic labor strikes. This course looks at a few of those strikes of ordinary American working people during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will examine the events in historical context, analyze how they have been remembered in poetry, painting, and song, and connect their meaning to more current movements for economic and cultural justice.
- LSTU-L 480 Senior Seminar or Readings (3 cr.) This course can be used as a classroom seminar or directed reading course. It addresses current issues, historical developments, and other labor-related concerns. Topics may vary each semester.