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| navigate: home: magazine: winter 2000: article | |
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Labor educators work to expand horizons of Pennsylvania workers By Kerry A. Newman | ||||||
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Dr. Howard Harris and Dr. Robert Bussel are partners, but their offices are located at opposite ends of the state. While it may not seem conducive to good business, a combination of teamwork, telecommunications and travel make the partnership successful. Harris and Bussel comprise the staff of Penn State’s Labor Education program. Harris works out of an office at Penn State New Kensington and serves the western half of Pennsylvania, while Bussel is located at Penn State Great Valley and serves the eastern half of Pennsylvania. “We divide the state geographically,” Bussel said. “There is a lot of consultation, and there is a lot of sharing of ideas. It really is in the best sense of the word a team effort,” Harris said. “We discuss a lot of the programmatic initiatives together, and we teach a lot together. We try to maximize the limited resources we have by helping each other out. It is really one program with two geographic focuses. There is no sense that there are two separate operations or two separate offices.” Based in the College of the Liberal Arts, the Labor Education program has been housed in Outreach and Cooperative Extension’s Division of Continuing Education since 1996. The mission of the program is to strengthen the labor movement in Pennsylvania, help organized workers develop leadership capabilities that will prepare them for the challenges of the 21st century, conduct research on timely social issues and help spread public awareness of Pennsylvania’s extensive labor and working-class roots. Harris and Bussel, assistant professors of labor studies and industrial relations, successfully integrate Penn State’s mission of teaching, research and service into the Labor Education program. “In many ways we are the epitome of it,” said Bussel. “The aim is to help workers build more effective unions. That is at the root of our mission.” Historically, the Labor Education program at Penn State began more than 50 years ago when training programs were needed to educate the growing membership of the labor movement. Out of the Labor Education program rose the present academic department that offers resident students baccalaureate and graduate degrees and research opportunities. Over the years, the Labor Education program evolved constantly as the staff sought to respond to the ever changing needs of the Pennsylvania workforce. Harris called the Labor Education program analogous to Cooperative Extension, because the Cooperative Extension unit helps to serve the needs of farmers, while the labor education program serves union members. “The labor work that we do is a similar kind of thing,” he said. “We help improve their skills as local union officers, improve their knowledge of the world in which they operate, provide technical training and provide an academic perspective on the role of workers in society. We work mainly with people who are members of trade unions.” “Improving the quality of work life is something we are very much concerned about,” Bussel added. While travel is necessary to meet the needs of their constituents, Harris and Bussel are strategically located in Pennsylvania. “Two of the biggest concentrations of union members in the state are around the southeastern and southwestern areas,” Harris said. Maintaining close connections with labor unions is a daily part of the job as Harris and Bussel work to create and deliver approximately 30 programs a year. They strive to develop customized programs that respond to the needs of individual unions. In addition, they advise union members about new issues, trends and social problems that may impact the workforce. “Ultimately, we want to customize what we do to fit the particular needs of the organization we are serving,” Bussel said. “Ten or 15 years ago, we would never have done a program on workplace violence or sexual harassment,” Harris said. “But as new issues emerge constantly, just as the world of work is constantly changing, part of our responsibility is to keep abreast of those trends. If we see these trends are increasing social problems or economic problems that face workers, we try to develop curriculum. As the workforce changes, we try to keep ahead of it and constantly come up with new program initiatives to try to meet those changing needs.” Harris and Bussel create noncredit programs that span many disciplines. In addition to the programs about workplace violence and sexual harassment, they have designed, among others, timely programs that address new technologies, workforce diversity and the Family and Medical Leave Act. In addition to the noncredit offerings, the Labor Education program hosts annual resident programs, including a summer institute at University Park campus and the Union Leadership Academy. The Labor Education program has overseen the Union Leadership Academy for more than 30 years. During this certificate program in leadership development, students have the opportunity to explore topics such as collective bargaining, labor leadership and commonsense economics. While the majority of their clients are from unions, Harris and Bussel are expanding their services by offering joint labor-management programming. According to Bussel, they are actively developing joint programs that will train supervisors and union stewards in the areas of workplace violence, sexual harassment and problem-solving. To date, Harris and Bussel have delivered programs to the following partnerships: Lucent Technologies and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Quaker Oats and the Machinists Union and Cabot Corp. and the United Food and Commercial Workers. Clients hail from many industries and locales. The two faculty members have worked with garment workers in Scranton, chocolate workers in Hershey and postal workers in Philadelphia. “Seven or eight times out of 10, we are teaching not at a campus setting,” Bussel said, “but at a union hall, a hotel, a church, a community center; wherever it is convenient for union folks to come.” The effects of their work extend beyond the people they educate, because educating union workers positively affects the economy of the state. Harris described their services to the trade unions as a partnership in economic development. “It improves the economy of the state by maintaining high-quality jobs and by guaranteeing good wages and benefits,” Harris said. It creates a “high-wage, high-productivity economy,” Bussel added. Future challenges for the Penn State Labor Education program include anticipating and adjusting to the constant changes in the workforce of Pennsylvania. Harris and Bussel expect workforce development and diversity to be important topics as Pennsylvania continues to become more ethnically diverse and technologically advanced. Developing more partnerships, creating more joint-sponsored programs and providing a diversified mix of services will be key components in meeting the challenges. “We are especially interested in working with individual unions to develop sustained leadership development programs that will position them to be more effective as we enter the next century,” Bussel said. The faculty members measure their success by the individuals they educate. For Harris, seeing individuals grow over time is one of the most rewarding aspects of the job. “The most important moments are when you can see the impact education has and how it can transform people—individuals—and help them grow and develop, particularly when they have not had the opportunity to be exposed to higher education before,” he said. “Those are the most rewarding moments—when you see the students growing and blossoming. That is the only way you can really measure the value and success of what you do.” Bussel agreed. “At the individual level, that is the most gratifying part of the work.” “To give people the sense of possibility, to give them a sense of expanded horizons, of their own potential—it really opens up the world for them, ” Harris added.
Educators share similar labor history Dr. Howard Harris and Dr. Robert Bussel may have been destined to become partners in the Penn State Labor Education program. They first met in 1981, outside of Penn State, when both men worked on a strike in West Virginia. Harris joined the Penn State faculty in 1981, bringing to the program both his teaching experience and his hands-on work with unions. More than a decade later, in 1994, their careers intersected again when Bussel joined the Labor Education program, after working for 10 years with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. Coincidentally, Harris also had worked for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union earlier in his career. Bussel explained that he joined the Penn State program, because it allowed him to marry his interests in labor education and historical research. “I had encountered a number of labor educators, and I was impressed with them as people and by the work that they did. They seemed to embody some of the highest values exemplified by the labor movement,” Bussel added. In addition to planning and delivering programs, both faculty members avidly pursue research interests and publish on a regular basis. Harris has edited Keystone of Democracy: A History of Pennsylvania Workers, and Bussel’s book From Harvard to the Ranks of Labor: Powers Hapgood and the American Working Class was published by Penn State Press. | |||||
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