At Oregon Convention Center
LERC to celebrate 30th anniversary March 7
Established in 1900 at Portland, Oregon
as a voice of the labor movement.
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fessor at the university, was LERC’s in-
terim director in 1977 as a labor advi-
sory committee searched for a director.
He wasted no time establishing courses
on stewards’ training, contract negotia-
tions and contract administration.
In 1978, Emory Via was hired as the
first permanent director. It was his ties
to national labor leadership that raised
LERC’s profile nationally. Within a
year of Via’s hiring the George Meany
Center for Labor Studies selected the
labor center to lead the development of
a national program in grievance han-
dling for transit industry unions.
Via retired in 1988 and Margaret
Hallock, a state economist and former
director of research of the Oregon Pub-
lic Employees Union, was hired. Under
her leadership, LERC broadened its re-
search and programming and began to
emphasize strategic approaches to
workplace change, labor-management
relations and union operations. The
new focus included an aggressive out-
reach to workers, unionists and scholars
worldwide.
Hallock left in 2001 to take over as
founding director of the Wayne Morse
Center for Law and Politics at UO. She
was succeeded by Bob Bussel, a former
union rep for the Amalgamated Cloth-
ing and Textile Workers Union (now
UNITE-HERE) and Service Employ-
ees International Union. Bussel taught
in the labor education program at Penn
State University for seven years before
coming to Eugene.
Under Bussel’s leadership, LERC
has continued in its tradition of provid-
ing direct, hands-on education, training
and consultation to workers and unions.
Faculty also provide technical assis-
tance to legislators, community ac-
tivists and government agencies, and
frequently furnish background infor-
mation on labor and employment issues
to the news media.
Bussel said LERC is continually de-
veloping its course content to reflect
changes in the workplace and job mar-
kets. The decline in manufacturing and
growth in service sector, governmental
and alternative energy jobs — plus the
influx of immigrants and women into
the workforce — requires it.
“I’d say there’s more emphasis on
research in support of organizing and
the right to organize, immigrant work-
ers and sustainable business develop-
ment,” Bussel said.
Today, LERC reaches more than
3,000 workers each year on a biennial
budget of about $1.2 million. It has five
full-time and three part-time faculty,
plus a staff of five. Faculty includes as-
sociate professors Gordon Lafer and
Marcus Widenor; instructors Barbara
Byrd, Lynn Feekin and Helen Moss;
and research associates Jennifer Hess,
Laurel Kincl and Marc Weinstein.
Lafer has taken his research on
union election procedures before Con-
gress, testifying last year on the right of
workers to organize. Byrd coordinates
the Portland Center. Her research has
included apprenticeship training in the
building trades and women in non-tra-
ditional jobs. She also serves as secre-
tary-treasurer of the Oregon AFL-CIO,
a part-time post. Moss coordinates the
U-LEAD (Union-Leadership Educa-
tion and Development), a non-credit
certificate program.
The March 7 celebration starts with a
reception at 6 p.m. at the Oregon Con-
vention Center. Keynote speakers at the
dinner will be Gov. Kulongoski, UO
President Dave Frohnmayer and Ruth
Milkman, director of the UCLA Insti-
tute for Research on Labor and Em-
ployment.
From 2 to 5 p.m. LERC will hold a
symposium entitled, “Creating Labor-
Community Alliances That Work.”
At the dinner LERC also will launch
a new Strategic Training and Action Re-
search (STAR) Fund. Net proceeds
from the celebration will benefit the
fund, which will be used in part to pro-
vide more training programs and to
bring visiting union leaders to Oregon.
Carpenters, Electricians, Laborers, Glaziers, Sheetmetal Workers, Floorcoverers, Bricklayers, Cement Masons, Roofers, Asbestos Workers, Family, Millwrights, Painters, Elevators, Plasterers
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(International Standard Serial Number 0894-444X)
The bill was signed by Gov. Bob
Straub on July 15, 1977, at a dinner in
Springfield celebrating the 20th an-
niversary of the merger in Lane County
of the American Federation of Labor
(AFL) and the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO).
“This is one of the major pieces of
legislation labor has gotten passed in
years. It will have a long-lasting effect,”
Pat Randall, then secretary-treasurer of
the Oregon AFL-CIO, said at the time.
Randall and retired Oregon AFL-
CIO President Irv Fletcher were lauded
for their efforts lobbying for LERC. At
the time, Fletcher was secretary-treas-
urer of the Lane County Labor Council.
The labor center was the first of its
kind in the Pacific Northwest, but was
modeled after similar education pro-
grams at public universities, including
Cornell, Rutgers, Indiana, UC Berke-
ley and Wisconsin (which was the first
to be established in 1924).
LERC caught on quickly. Recogni-
tion and demand were so great that the
Legislature nearly doubled it’s budget
in 1979. By 1986, a Portland Center
had been established and a full-time
faculty position was created for it.
“The visions of decades ago were on
the mark,” Steven Deutsch, professor
emeritus of LERC, wrote last April in a
retrospective. Deutsch, a sociology pro-
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Electricians, Carpenters, Laborers, Glaziers, Sheetmetal Workers, Floorcoverers, Bricklayers, Cement Masons, Roofer, Asbestos Workers, Family, Millwrights, Painters, Elevators, Plasterers
EUGENE — The Labor Education
and Research Center (LERC) at the
University of Oregon will celebrate its
30th anniversary Friday, March 7, with
a dinner at the Oregon Convention
Center in Portland.
Over the last three decades, LERC
has opened the university’s door to
rank-and-file workers, union officials
and community leaders, providing
them access to the resources and ex-
pertise of the higher education system.
As was noted in UO’s “Oregon
Quarterly, Autumn 2007” newsletter:
“Each year, thousands of union mem-
bers attend LERC classes to address an
array of issues from how to handle
workplace bullying to public speaking.
Its collective bargaining institutes have
achieved statewide renown. Summer
schools bring together groups such as
organizers and labor relations profes-
sionals to catch up on current develop-
ments, learn new strategies, and net-
work.”
The vision for LERC was an ob-
scure one that began in 1971 in the
form of a resolution adopted at the an-
nual convention of the Oregon AFL-
CIO. “Creation of a labor education
center at the University of Oregon” was
one of among 63 resolutions passed
that year — a time when the focus of
the country was on the Nixon Adminis-
tration’s wage-price freeze. Labor
wanted President Nixon out of office
and the Oregon convention revolved
around ways to rally the troops to elect
a new president.
Still, with that resolution in hand,
union officials began lobbying law-
makers and administrators on the im-
portance of a labor center for Oregon’s
workforce.
In 1975, then-State Rep. Ted Kulon-
goski of Eugene (now governor, and a
keynote speaker March 7) introduced a
bill to create a center at UO. It failed.
Two years later another measure was
introduced. This time lawmakers were
convinced. They passed the bill along
with nearly $250,000 in funding.
Glaziers, Carpenters, Laborers, Electricians, Sheetmetal Workers, Floorcoverers, Bricklayers, Cement Masons, Roofers, Asbestos Workers, Family, Millwrights, Painters, Elevators, Plasterers
FEBRUARY 15, 2008
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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