165 courses with the subject ILRGL, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
Introductory survey covering the major changes in the nature of work, the workforce, and the institutions involved in industrial relations from the late 19th century to the present.
This course provides an introduction to the field of Disability Studies, in both an academic and applied context, and will examine the issues that affect the inclusion and integration of people with disabilities in the U.S., including: the history and impact of medical and social attitudes toward disability; the legacy and future of the disability rights movement; disability policy and laws, and their effects on workplace, technological, and physical environments; representations of disability in mass media; access to education and employment; and contemporary national efforts to expand the rights and to promote the inclusion of people with disabilities in the workplace, educational domain, and everyday society.?
This course studies the history of American capitalism. It helps you to answer these questions: What is capitalism? Is the U.S. more capitalist than other countries? How has capitalism shaped the history of the United States? Has it been a force for freedom, or is it a system of exploitation? What is its future? Through lectures, readings, and discussions, we'll give you the tools to win all your future arguments about capitalism, pro and con. And we won't even charge you the full market price. (HIST-HNA)
Survey and analysis of the law governing labor relations and employee rights in the workplace. Half of the course examines the legal framework in which collective bargaining takes place, including union organizational campaigns, negotiations for and enforcement of collective bargaining agreements, and the use of economic pressure. The other half surveys the laws against discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, age, and disability. Also serves as an introduction to judicial and administrative systems.
This is an introductory-level course designed to be of value and appealing to the broad Cornell undergraduate student body. It will provide an introduction to the concepts of conflict, negotiations, and conflict resolution. The course will examine negotiations and conflict resolution in a range of different contexts, such as labor and employment, commercial, educational, family, environmental and community conflicts.
A comprehensive introduction to the labor relations systems of the United States and other countries. Covers the determinants of bargaining power, the process of labor agreement negotiation and administration, and assessment of the effects that collective representation exerts on economic and social outcomes. Special consideration is given to the increasing importance of new technology and international factors including global supply chains.
The course reviews the great debates on capitalist economic growth to shed light on the current epochal transformation of the global economy. Can capitalism survive? Can socialism work? The debate continues. Why and how has American capitalism shaped the emergence of dynamic capitalism in China? What enables and guides the emergence of a global high-technology knowledge economy in the 21st century? What is the relationship between capitalism as an economic order and democracy?
Students learn the principles of argumentation and debate, including the difference between opinions and arguments, selecting persuasive reasons in support of claims, stakeholder analysis, discerning logical fallacies, framing, comparing impact claims (including ethical appeals), and effective research skills. Students will partner up with their classmates for in-class debates on timely topics. Students will also complete research-based advocacies as written assignments for the course. This course also includes one test, in an open-book (i.e. you can use your notes and consult the textbook) format. Students learn the principles of argumentation and debate. Topics emphasize Internet database research, synthesis of collected data, policy analysis of evidentiary quality, refutation of counter claims, identification of logical fallacies, risk evaluation, framing of issues, and coherent storytelling. Prepares students to work with a great range of opinion and evidence. Emphasizes different viewpoints, including those of different cultures. Assumptions are interrogated.
This sophomore writing seminar engages in a critical, in-depth study of the way in which people with disabilities and the disability experience are represented in an array of interdisciplinary texts, with particular emphasis on the legal tradition and interpretations. Drawing from a variety of historical as well as contemporary texts and documents, we will explore the implications of disability in culture and policy, particularly as they impact ideas of citizenship and rights, primarily in the United States, but also globally. We will examine the history of disability law, looking closely at a number of Supreme Court cases and decisions. We will additionally allow for an intensive focus on the development of critical thought and reasoning in both oral and written communication.
The care economy supplies basic needs for individuals and provides the human infrastructure for society, but care work often happens outside the regulated labor market, raising challenges for and beyond work law. How does the law conceptualize, compensate, and regulate care work? How does the law allocate the responsibility and costs of care? How does gender and race factor the law's treatment of care work? This course will examine these questions across various bodies of law, predominantly in the context of the United States. As a writing seminar, this course will develop the student's analytical writing capability through a series of writing assignments designed to break down the writing process into discernable steps, culminating in a longer paper on a topic relevant to this course.
Whether workers have sufficient voice at work to affect their working conditions and pay is one of the fundamental questions addressed in the field labor relation, organizational behaviors, and human resource studies. The class introduces different theoretical and methodological approaches to study worker voice and examines the effectiveness of various forms of worker voice in both union and nonunion settings.
This course examines the experiences of workers attempting to navigate the labor standards enforcement bureaucracy. We review theories of legal consciousness and legal mobilization to help explain the conditions under which low-wage workers come forward to demand justice. We walk through claimsmaking in an array of federal and state administrative bureaucracies, including wage and hour, health and safety, and discrimination. We also look at how the immigration enforcement regime impacts workplace protection. We assess how these formal protections are filtered through various institutional gatekeepers and how organizational compliance structures shape worker's ability to make claims on their rights. We consider how intersecting bases of inequality (e.g., gender, race, and national origin) matter, and how lay versus legal conceptions of workplace justice often diverge.
There is much talk today about the fact that we live in a post-New Deal order. This begs the question(s). What was the New Deal? Where did it come from? How long did it last? This course will study the origins, establishment and decline of the New Deal order in US politics, culture and the industrial order. We will explore what the New Deal meant to workers, management, business and an array of interest groups. Special emphasis will be placed on the roles of working-class people in the making of public policies and industrial relations and how these roles change over time.
The Soviet Union was the first state in the world that claimed to represent workers’ interest. What did this mean in practice? In this writing seminar, students will explore how this was reflected in Soviet labor relations, social structures, and governance, and consider the extent to which they differed from those under capitalism. Topics in Soviet labor history include rapid industrialization and collectivized agriculture, the role of gender and ethnicity in the workplace, shifting boundaries between forced and wage labor, and the emergence of a modern service society. Students will work with a variety of sources from newspaper articles and memoirs to films and novellas to gain experience navigating constraints on public discourse in their research.
We all know people who have moved someplace for a job. We probably are still in touch with these people: by phone, by e-mail or by web-cam, maybe even through old-fashioned letters. But what did it mean for people in the past to move for a job? How was moving for work different over a hundred years ago? In this class, we will examine at least three different ways in which people moved to work: moving within a single country, moving across national borders, and moving as a part of the job itself. How did such moves change the lives of both the workers and their families?
This course offers an overview of the structure and politics of social policy in the Global South. It addresses commonalities and differences in social policies across middle-income countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and examines scholarly explanations for social policy adoption, policy design, and social policy change. The course's approach is comparative, focusing on different regions and country cases in the Global South, but pays special attention to the evolution of social protection in Latin America, where welfare systems are relatively broader in scope and have been the subject of more scholarly research. The course explores the types of protections states extend to different groups, particularly focusing on the divide between insiders-meaning formal-sector workers with labor contracts-and outsiders-informal, unemployed, and rural workers. It also examines the political dynamics (electoral competition, protest), institutions (e.g. political regimes), and actors (social and labor movements, political parties) that shape social policy. Finally, it explores the role of policy legacies, ideas, and economic factors in shaping social protection in the Global South.
This course offers an overview of labor movements and organizations of informal workers in Latin America. It first analyzes the origins and evolution of labor institutions and labor movements in the region and examines existing explanations for their varying trajectories. Second, the course explores the emergence, organizational features, and collective action strategies of organizations and movements of informal workers, including low-income unemployed and rural workers. Some of these movements have emerged or acquired increasing political relevance in recent decades. The course reviews the challenges these groups face in acting together and helps us understand the circumstances under which they emerge and are able to influence state policy. Finally, the course examines when and how labor unions and organizations of informal workers build alliances to advance common interests and explores these alliances' political and social implications.
Labor movements are crucial actors in Latin American politics. This course will analyze and explain the contributions of organized labor to democratization processes in Latin America from the 19th century to the present-not only in the struggle for formal democracy, but also in the creation of new forms of participation and in the expansion of social citizenship rights. Special attention will be given to the role of labor in shaping the major political eras in the region, including the rise of populism following the onset of mass politics, the period of redemocratization in the late 20th century, and the more recent political shift towards the left. The course will cover a wide range of countries in the region and different labor movements in different historical periods. It will draw on political economy and political sociology approaches to explain both general processes and differences across countries.
Even through different countries may adopt similar economic strategies, their industrial relations system are generally quite unique, based on the particular institutional histories in each nation. This course is focused on understanding industrial relations systems around the world. Structured on a regional basis (Europe, Middle East and North Africa, Latin America, and Asia), students will appreciate the similarities and differences in industrial relations within each region, and in particular the impact of the design of each national industrial relations system on outcomes for workers, employers, and national governments.
Provides an introduction to how globalization is changing the nature of work, labor, and capital. It examines both contemporary and historical debates about globalization, but also covers a number of interrelated issues, including the regulation of labor standards, the mobility of capital, the rise of global production systems, international labor, and responses to globalization. Lectures and discussion for the topics mentioned above will be grounded in the experiences of different countries, firms, workplaces, industrial sectors, and individuals.
The Arab uprisings of 2010/2011 brought renewed attention to the power of ordinary citizens to collectively overthrow their governments. This course introduces theories of collective action, resistance, protest, and revolutions. It addresses the following questions: How do aggrieved citizens make claims against their governments, especially in non-democratic contexts? When and why do people act collectively to make those claims? How do governments respond to various forms of protest? What constitutes a revolution? Why do some succeed and others fail? We pay particular attention to different forms of workers' mobilization and to the role of labor and other social classes in revolutions.
This course is modeled after Great Books literature courses in the humanities, but with two important differences: we read non-fiction books in the social sciences rather than the humanities, written by highly prominent contemporary social scientists. The course title refers to the fact that the books are new, hence their potential greatness has yet to be confirmed by the test of time. We choose living authors to give students a unique opportunity: to interact with each of the six authors in Q&A sessions via live or recorded video conferencing. Great Books courses are organized around books rather than the more traditional theme-based approach in most undergraduate classes, and each book is intended to stand on its own. Although the topics vary widely, each of the books addresses fundamental puzzles that motivate social science inquiry regarding human behavior and social interaction. These puzzles cut across disciplinary boundaries, hence the course is co-taught by psychologist Steve Ceci and sociologist/information scientist Michael Macy who provide continuity by calling attention to similarities and differences in theories, concepts, assumptions, and methods between sociologists (who focus on what happens between individuals) and psychologists (who focus on what happens within individuals). The authors vary from year to year but include famous social scientists such as Claude Steele, Daniel Kahneman, Nicholas Christakis, Beverly Tatum, Malcolm Gladwell, and Steven Pinker.
Explores immigrant workers' experiences in the 19th and 20th centuries from different perspectives. Students examine what it meant to the immigrants themselves to arrive as strangers in the United States and the ways in which preexisting American groups defined these immigrants as strangers. Similarly, students look at U.S. citizens in their roles as greeters of immigrants, detractors of immigrants, and as models for the aspirations of immigrants. The main examples are taken from the industrial and union realms.
The purpose of this course is to provide students with the appropriate academic framework to excel in a supervised fieldwork experience working for a social sector organization through the High Road Fellowships. The multi-disciplinary, place-based background will inform their work projects, enhance their engaged learning as a class and as individuals over the summer, and prepare them for integrating the course work with their field work into a final report of their High Road experience.
This course equips students to use different modes of rhetorical analysis to examine historical and contemporary artifacts in critical ways. Grading is based on class participation, tests and a final paper. The final paper requires students to identify primary source materials with a connection to either past or present labor movements and apply one or more of these modes of rhetorical criticism as the basis of an unique investigation into a particular labor movement's significant symbolic acts. Students will be expected to hone their own teaching and public speaking skills by giving at least one major in class presentation.
This course covers the history, use, and practical application of interest arbitration by Major League Baseball (“MLB”) and the National Hockey League (“NHL”) to determine player compensation for a subset of MLB and NHL players. The class involves writing a brief in connection with a NHL salary arbitration simulation during the semester involving real data for NHL players, as well as an arbitration hearing making use of real data for MLB players.
This course offers an overview of the structure and politics of social policy in the Global South. It addresses commonalities and differences in social policies across middle- and low-income countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and examines scholarly explanations for social policy adoption, policy design, and social policy change. The course’s approach is comparative, focusing on different regions and country cases in the Global South, but pays special attention to the evolution of social protection in Latin America, where welfare systems are relatively broader in scope. The course explores the types of protections states extend to different groups, particularly focusing on the divide between insiders—meaning formal-sector workers with labor contracts—and outsiders—informal, unemployed, and rural workers.
Students learn the principles of argumentation and debate. Topics emphasize Internet database research, synthesis of collected data, policy analysis, evidentiary quality, refutation of counter claims, identification of logical fallacies, risk evaluation, framing of issues, and coherent storytelling. Prepares students to work with a great range of opinion and evidence. Emphasizes different viewpoints, including those of different cultures. Assumptions are interrogated.
This seminar course will guide students through the process of developing research proposals. Readings, course work, and class discussions will be organized around formulating and refining research questions and hypotheses, building literature reviews, and designing appropriate research methods. We will also discuss techniques for analyzing qualitative data and for presenting research to academic and practitioner audiences. Students will submit a complete research proposal at the conclusion of the course.
This course examines relationships between gender, work, and class in U.S. history from the nineteenth century to the present. How has work been organized along gendered lines, both at the workplace and at home? What is the historical relationship between gender and the development of capitalism in the United States? How have social categories like race and gender historically shaped working-class politics? How have labor unions dealt with issues of inequality between different segments of the working class? To what extent has public policy challenged or reinforced these forms of inequality? By exploring these questions, this course uncovers how gender has influenced, and been influenced by, the experiences and politics of work in U.S. history.
This course is designed to provide an in-depth understanding of the concepts, tools, methodologies, and resources pivotal to the strategic and effective utilization of qualitative and quantitative data. The course structure is organized around a series of modules, each focusing on distinct analytical methodologies and their potential applications to modern challenges in labor relations. These modules include qualitative, quantitative, and AI-based (e.g., machine learning) research methods. The course's pedagogical approach encourages the practical application of course concepts through hands-on exercises and assignments, enabling students to integrate and contextualize the course content within actual research questions.
The adage “there is power in the union!” has been an important rallying cry for the labor movement. Yet scholars of the labor movement have often struggled to identify what this power actually is and where it comes from. This course offers a survey of social movement and union power theories to explore why and how unions win. The course is built around four dominant theories from sociology and ILR: resource mobilization, the political process model, the power resource approach, and strategic capacity. Movements covered in this exploration will include: the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the United Farm Workers, the United Auto Workers, Justice for Janitors, and gig worker organizing, among others.
This winter session course is designed to provide students with an introduction to the role of labor and industrial relations in Cambodian development. Taught over the winter break (Jan 3-Jan 17), this is a three-credit course taught in Cambodia, through the School of Continuing Education and Summer sessions. The course involves a mix of lectures and field visits. Classes will be conducted for 3 hours a day, followed by relevant field visits. Each class will be supplemented by guest lectures from Cambodian locals. (ASIAN-SC)
Workers, often in alliance with other marginalized groups, have played a major role in shaping modern Latin American politics. This course examines labor-based forms of political representation in Latin America and provides an overview of major historic and contemporary movements across the region, including those that seek to represent and empower traditionally excluded sectors, such as urban and rural workers, informal workers, women, as well as indigenous groups. In this course, students will analyze the conditions that facilitate or inhibit collective mobilization, the connections between various movements and political parties, especially those on the left, and their relationship with the state.
This course focuses on the evolution, current trajectories, and methods to improve labor practices in global supply chains. We will examine the key issue of why, after 25 years of corporate efforts and intensive consumer activism, there have not been sustainable improvements in labor practices in the global supply chains in the apparel industry. Taking both a Corporate Social Responsibility, and Global Value Chains perspective, we will examine a range of problems and issues that inhibit sustainability, and explore new innovative developments that show promise. Several stakeholders from corporations, NGOS, monitoring firms, and/or suppliers will engage with the class, either in person or through videoconferencing. The course will end with an evaluation of approaches that are both innovative and promising. Students will be expected to write position papers on current developments, which will be circulated to multiple stakeholders so that the output from the course is relevant. The course also offers opportunities for students to engage more deeply in research projects that are currently underway.
The course will be thoroughly comparative in order to highlight both the specificity of each country as well as more generalizable dynamics of 21st century development. It will be divided into a number of inter-related modules. After a framing lecture, we will briefly cover the two countries' distinct experiences with colonialism and centralized planning. Then we will move on to dynamics of growth, which will seek to explain the relative success of China in the era of market reforms. In analyzing political consequences, we will assess how new forms of cooperation and conflict have emerged. This will involve attention to both internal dynamics as well as how rapid development has seen an increasing accumulation of political power in the East. It goes without saying that accelerating growth has led to huge social change, resulting in profound reorganizations of Chinese and Indian society. Finally, the course will conclude by returning to our original question - is this indeed The Asian Century? What does the rise of China and India mean for the rest of the world, and how are these two giant nations likely to develop in the future? (ASIAN-SC)
The US-China relationship has emerged as one of the definitive economic and political vectors of the 21st century. There is little question that the US and China will remain the two most powerful polities for decades to come, and in recent years their respective governments have become increasingly hostile. While this imperial rivalry is very real and poses grave threats to humanity, this course aims to transcend methodological nationalism by approaching the US-China relationship from the perspective of workers. In doing so we will interrogate the complex and deeply interwoven set of political, economic, and social linkages between these two capitalist behemoths.
East Asia has been the most economically dynamic region in the world since the end of World War II. Starting with Japan, one country after another has undergone a phase of rapid industrialization and economic development, on a scale and at a pace unmatched in history. This course focuses on the role that labor has played in East Asian development, attending to the socio-political conditions of working-class emergence as well as the dynamics of worker resistance and labor movement institutionalization. We will cover Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and China, analyzing the specificity of each while also highlighting the interconnected nature of labor and development in each society.
Do you want to learn the discussion-based case method as taught at the Harvard Business School? Do you want to learn how to write a long research paper? Do you not want to take a final examination? If you answer these questions affirmatively, this course may be for you. We are told often that American primacy is in decline and that other powers are rising. What does this mean when we examine the experience of Government and Business in different countries around the world? Is the international political economy a hydraulic system in which some units rise and others fall? Are the dynamics of the international political economy all pointing in one direction? Or are they marked by cross-currents? This course seeks answers to these questions by teaching the basics of macro-economics, examining a range of powerful states (among others China, India, Russia and Japan) and persisting issues (financial globalization and foreign investment; oil and OPEC; trade and aid) as they play themselves out in different countries (such as Malaysia, Korea; Saudi Arabia, Nigeria; Mexico, Brazil, Uganda, Indonesia). (GOVT-AM, GOVT-CP, GOVT-IR)
Do you want to learn the discussion-based case method as taught at the Harvard Business School? Do you want to learn how to write a long research paper? Do you not want to take a final examination? If so this course may be for you. Since the beginning of the republic, American intellectuals, politicians and businessmen have extolled the exceptionalism of America. In a world of diverse forms of capitalism, can this view be sustained? Is America a shining city on the hill or a darkened city in the valley? Comparison is an effective way to discern and assess what is unique and what is general in the distinctive form of America's capitalist democracy. In this course the liberal market economy of the United States with its distinctive strengths and weaknesses is put side-by-side with different forms of liberal, corporatist and statist market economies that characterize different European countries in the emerging European polity. The diversity of capitalism points to one overarching conclusion: all of these countries are arguably capitalist, democratic market economies belonging to the West; and each of them has distinctive strengths and weaknesses. Like all other countries, America is ordinary in mobilizing its formidable capacities and displaying its glaring weaknesses as it copes with change. (GOVT-AM, GOVT-CP, GOVT-IR)
What does it mean to live in the aftermath of slavery? How has the human history of slavery contributed to the production of natural values that we take for granted-such as community, property, citizenship, gender, individuality, and freedom? This course explores the history of enslavement throughout the human past, from the ancient world to the modern era. We will pay particular attention to the relationship between slavery and the construction of racial blackness. We will explore various institutionalized forms of servitude throughout time and space, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic worlds, from eunuchism to concubinage, from slavery in the Roman Empire to modern slavery and sex trafficking. Readings will be in English and will engage a variety of dynamic sources: theoretical, historiographical, anthropological, religious, legal, literary and multimedia.
We will undertake a comparative study of African American and Latina/o histories, cultures, and politics from the American Revolution to the present. Students will gain understandings of connections between events in the Americas including the abolition of slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Mexican American War, and the US Civil War. We will study ties between US empire and the Jim Crow/Juan Crow systems. We will seek to understand Black and Brown workers' freedom struggles against systemic racism in the Sunbelt, and the roles these workers played in the making of the New Deal, Third World Solidarity, feminism, and the election of the first African American president in US history.
This introductory course introduces students to issues and debates related to international migration and will provide an interdisciplinary foundation to understanding the factors that shape migration flows and migrant experiences. We will start by reviewing theories of the state and historical examples of immigrant racialization and exclusion in the United States and beyond. We will critically examine the notions of borders, citizenship/non-citizenship, and the creation of diasporas. Students will also hear a range of perspectives by exposing them to Cornell guest faculty who do research and teach on migration across different disciplines and methodologies and in different world areas. Examples include demographic researchers concerned with immigrant inequality and family formation, geographic perspectives on the changing landscapes of immigrant metropolises, legal scholarship on the rights of immigrant workers, and the study of immigrant culture from a feminist studies lens. Offered each fall semester.
Is the welfare state a protector from capitalism or an accomplice to capitalism? Social safety nets and capitalist markets have a complicated relationship for workers. Healthcare, retirement pensions, unemployment insurance –these provisions protect workers from the risks of getting sick, old, and fired. These same provisions are also tremendous sources of capital, invested into the very employers and asset-managers who pose risks to workers. This contradiction is not an "American thing," but extends to social democracies like the Netherlands who steward one of the largest national capital-funded pensions. This course uncovers these complexities of the welfare state, with special theoretical and empirical attention to labor. Geographically it will focus on the United States, with frequent international comparisons to examine the commonalities and differences of welfare states. And lastly, it will be equal parts sociology and history, illuminating the origins, transformations, and inequalities of the welfare state in the United States.
This course will explore the history of care work, from nursing to teaching, sex work to surrogacy. Beginning with theories of reproductive labor, we will move on to the history of coerced and enslaved care and then to caring as free labor. Focusing primarily on the United States, this course examines several interrelated questions: how do the daily labors of cooking, cleaning, caretaking, and gestating fit within the capitalist mode of production? How have these labors been made to produce profit? Who performs the labor of care and how are the structures of caring workforces influenced by ideologies of race, gender, and citizenship? We will conclude by exploring the various ways theorists, activists, policymakers, and workers have imagined new ways of performing and valuing care.
This course examines the fundamentals of generative artificial intelligence and its potential impact on the future of work. It begins with an overview of how neural networks function, comparing them to earlier technological transformations. The course then looks at how generative AI may influence work, including changes to jobs, worker voice, and power dynamics. Broader societal issues, such as ethics, economic inequality, and governance, are also explored.
This course offers a survey of social movement and union power theories to explore why and how unions win. The course is built around four dominant theories from sociology and ILR: resource mobilization, the political process model, the power resource approach, and strategic capacity. Movements covered in this exploration will include: the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the United Farm Workers, the United Auto Workers, Justice for Janitors, and gig worker organizing, among others. In exploring the wide range of theories from sociology, political science, and labor relations in understanding social and labor movements this course seeks to historicize the current resurgence of union organizing through a comparison of a broad range of movement traditions.
Across twentieth-century history, race and war have been dynamic forces in shaping economic organization and everyday livelihoods. This course will approach labor and working-class history, through a focus on global war as well as 'wars at home.' Racial and warfare events often intersect-in the histories of presidents and activists, business leaders and industrial workers, CIA agents and police, soldiers and prisoners, American laborers abroad and non-Americans migrating stateside. In this course, we'll consider how race and war have been linked-from the rise of Jim Crow and U.S. empire in the 1890s, to the WWII 'Greatest Generation' and its diverse workplaces, to Vietnam and the civil rights movement, to the Iraq wars and immigrant workers, to debates about what has been called a 'military-industrial complex' and a 'prison-industrial complex'. (HIST-HNA)
This course is a survey of theories and politics of the labor process exploring how employers organize work, how workers respond to these efforts, and how this shapes industrial labor relations. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution scholars from Marx to Taylor considered how the design of the labor process impacted not only profit but workers' subjective experience of their work and their resistance. The last two decades have again seen significant changes and upheaval in the nature of work-gigification, digital surveillance, and the disruptive specter of generative AI-raising the importance of these questions yet again. Exploring the politics of how work is organized this course seeks to interrogate the historical context of these contemporary debates.
This course is a mandatory pre-departure seminar for all students who will participate in the Vietnam Global Learning Program trip to Ho-Chi-Minh City during the Winter Term. Students will learn basic facts about Vietnamese history, its current labor situation, and its role within the greater geographic region. The main deliverable for this course will be a short research inquiry into one core labor issue of note within contemporary Vietnamese society which each student will present to the rest of the class during the final week of instruction. In addition, students will receive training on protocols for travel and responsible conduct as an emissary of ILR and Cornell.
This course is a mandatory post-departure seminar for all students who participated in the Vietnam Global Learning Program trip to Ho-Chi-Minh City during the Winter Term. Students will debrief on their experiences during the trip and complete coursework summarizing the research foci they began developing in the Fall term.
Study of arbitration in the field of labor-management relations, including an analysis of principles and practices, the law of arbitration, the handling of materials in briefs and oral presentations, the conduct of mock arbitration hearing, and the preparation of arbitration opinions and post-hearing briefs.
This course provides an overview of state and federal governmental policy and administration that facilitates the inclusion of people with disabilities in the competitive labor market. Topics for the course will include: social security and means-tested entitlements related to disability, workforce development efforts, the state-federal partnership on vocational rehabilitation and training, workers' compensation, return-to-work, competitive integrated employment, and access to healthcare (e.g., Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Medicare). Students will learn about various policy experiments in the United States, from the New Deal to present, as they relate to disability inclusion in the workforce, and will be provided with the tools to critique existing disability and workforce development policy frameworks at both state and national levels to identify areas of improvement and innovation.
This course is offered to students interested in acquiring the knowledge, skills and techniques necessary to mediate community and campus disputes. In the first segment of the course, students will be introduced to the guiding principles of mediation and restorative conferencing. A review of the theories of conflict, models of mediation, and the benefits and challenges of each. The role of identity, culture, ethics and impasse in mediation will all be examined and incorporated into simulations and case studies. In the second segment, students will be assigned to observe, mediate, and facilitate cases referred to the Scheinman Institute from Cornell’s Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards (OSCCS), the Tompkins Country Community Dispute Resolution Center, the Ithaca City Small Claims Court, and the Montana Mediation program.
Conflict is an inherent part of organizational life. Nevertheless, organizational members often lack the adequate skills necessary to manage and resolve the host of tensions and disagreements that arise at work. This course is designed to develop and strengthen students' conflict resolution sills with a focus on the mediation of organizational conflicts. As such, the course will provide students with a theoretical and practical understanding of the mediation process. This foundation will then be used to apply mediation concepts and principles to everyday workplace conflict. Given the emphasis on skill building, the course will make extensive use of mediation simulations alongside classroom lectures and discussions.
This course is offered to students interested in furthering their knowledge of mediation, restorative practices, and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes and systems, and has a required prerequisite of The Campus Mediation Practicum I. Students will build on the Campus Mediation Practicum I, which sets the stage for the role mediation and restorative justice can effectively play in facilitating ADR processes in multiple settings. Students will be assigned to mentor CMP I student mediators as well as mediate complex cases referred to the Scheinman Institute from the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards (OSCCS), the Tompkins County Community Dispute Resolution Center, the Ithaca City Small Claims Court, and the Montana Mediation program. Students will also have the opportunity to engage with experienced mediators.
This course reviews U.S. law related to people with disabilities. Students in this course will learn about the nuances of disability law, including civil rights efforts to increase access to employment, public accommodations, education, and equal political and social participation. The course will review landmark case law from the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts, and will review key pieces of legislation like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Rehabilitation Act, Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Key topics will include nondiscrimination in the workplace, access to the political process, and access to justice and due process for people with disabilities. Because this is a law course, students will also learn how to read judicial opinions, interpret precedent, develop and structure legal memoranda, and engage in effective/convincing legal writing and analysis.
A recognition of the importance of intersectionality has become increasingly key to not only understand the complexity of social identity and lived experience, but to combat discrimination and oppression. While the course has a centering focus on the disability experience-in part because of the way in which disability is often left out of intersectional considerations-it will reveal how the economic, legal, and political structures of power and privilege that disadvantage people with disabilities cannot be looked at on a disability-specific basis alone. Thus we will give necessary attention to the disability experience as it overlaps and connects with lived experiences of race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and citizenship, among others. In looking particularly at the realms of employment, education, the law, and health care, we will explore the efficacy of legal and policy initiatives that are already in place, and in doing so, strongly consider the growing need for, and value of, intersectional approaches to discrimination and oppression.
Artificial intelligence (AI), computers, and digital technologies including robotics, machine learning, large language models (LLMs), internet-enabled platforms, and other “high-tech” drivers of automation have revolutionized the nature and organization of work in the U.S., with material implications for workers and their families, among others. This upper-level course begins with a rhetorical inquiry into whether and when the technological change engendered by digitization, information technology, and AI benefits workers. We then consider the broader impact of recent technological advances on manufacturing and fabrication, low- and semi-skilled service work, i.e., restaurant servers and bus drivers, and even on expert and professional work like that to which most of you presumably aspire. Among the central themes is the notion that technology does not unilaterally act upon workers, their employers, or society-at-large. Rather, workers, managers, customers, institutions, and policymakers shape which advances take hold and which do not, the ways that these technologies are deployed in the workplace, and the ways that society can actively mitigate the costs to technological advancement while harnessing its benefits.
ILRIC 4260 prepares ILR students for ILR-managed engaged-learning global programs. This is a skills-based course that prepares student personally, culturally, professionally, and academically for their summer engagement. As part of the engaged-learning process, continuous reflection will occur throughout the semester and the summer. Students are expected to be active learners and participate throughout the semester; discussions, team-projects, and engagement with classmates, instructors, and international partners will be essential throughout the semester.
This course examines the past and future of the European Social Model. Europe has long been known for its strong labor unions and social regulation of labor markets. We will ask to what extent these traditions have been maintained or transformed in the face of market liberalization and integration within the European Union. The class is organized in three parts. In part one, we will discuss major 'national models', including Germany, the Nordic countries, and France - reviewing both the history of these models and recent changes in collective bargaining and labor market institutions. In part two, we will compare major areas of labor market policy across European countries, including pay, parental leave, gender quotas, employment protection, and working time flexibility. In part three, we will examine the process and politics of European integration in the European Union (EU), including extension into Central and Eastern European countries and migration within Europe. The class will conclude with a discussion of challenges facing the EU: support for far right parties; responses to the climate crisis; and geopolitical conflict.
From a perspective based on comparative political economy, this course examines pressing contemporary issues such as the politics of growing inequality. We consider conflicts around markets, democracy, economic and social justice, including the efforts of actors such as governments and labor unions aimed at economic recovery, reducing inequality, and the reform of national and global economic policy and institutions. We also look at distinctive types of political and economic organization, especially in Europe and the United States, and the capacities of these societies to meet current economic, political, and social challenges, both domestic and international.
This course introduces students to the history, evolution and trajectory of state-labor relations, labor activism, and the politics of unemployment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). As the region with the highest concentration of non-democratic regimes in the world, the MENA provides a rich context for examining state efforts to control interest representation, and workers' struggles for freedom of association. In addition, the region features diverse political economic systems, making it ideal for examining the interaction between resource endowments and labor market dynamics. Finally, the region is ripe for the study of youth activism and the mobilization of the unemployed given that youth unemployment rates are higher in the MENA than any other world region.
This course examines international labor law through the rules, organizations and institutions that shape global governance of labor and explores the obstacles workers face in exercising internationally recognized labor rights. The International Labor Organization (ILO) is the United Nations organization mandated to design and supervise international labor rights; yet governments have plucked some of those rights out of the ILO governance system and dropped them into their own legal instruments, including their bilateral and multilateral trade agreements that are backed with economic sanctions. The course will also consider private governance initiatives that workers and labor organizations have sought to secure rights and corporate accountability where public governance efforts have failed.
This course examines popular constructions of race and how they inform labor and inequality in a variety of national contexts. Assigned course materials deal with the national history out of which contemporary understandings of race arise as well as power dynamics reflected in the maintenance and/or transformation of racial categories and how those power dynamics affect the nature of work, labor markets, and the distribution of social and economic resources. Some of the core questions addressed during this course are: How have racial categories and understandings about race changed over time? What are the common aspects of race and racial formation that cut across the selected nations? How are labor markets and occupations shaped and informed by race?
China's transition to capitalism has resulted in more than a generation of rapid and nearly uninterrupted growth. It increasingly dominates the production of all sorts of goods, from the very low end and labor intensive, to the high value added and capital intensive. China is aiming to dominate future product cycles, and is making major inroads in digital technology, AI, and robotics. This spectacular re-emergence as a world power has also increasingly lead to political conflict, both domestically and internationally. This course proceeds by assessing the interplay between marketization and economic transformation on the one hand, and social change and resistance as seen from the perspective of workers, on the other. While the course is specifically concerned with labor issues, we will see that the workplace is a prism that condenses and refracts much broader transformations occurring in Chinese society. (ASIAN-SC)
How do different nations implement policies that increase the labor market participation and economic security of people with disabilities? National frameworks vary in terms of the breadth of anti-discrimination requirements, as well as the rehabilitation and social services available to enhance labor market outcomes. Even with landmark human rights efforts like the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2008), many countries do not have robust frameworks for promoting substantive disability equality. One study found that among U.N. Member States, 27% did not explicitly define the term disability in their laws, 30% had no legal provisions for reasonable accommodations, and 51% had no specific legal protections for employment discrimination on health grounds.Disability policy considerations are on schedule to grow more pressing. Projections indicate that the global rate of disability will continue to rise, owing to factors such as population aging, pollution and climate displacement as potential causes of disability, and the global expansion of precarious employment and free-market deregulation. The global pandemic has also created new considerations. Many demographic changes will be more acute in low- and middle-income nations, where urbanization and population aging are occurring at more rapid rates. In this course, we will explore comparative policy approaches, legal frameworks, and cultural factors related to disability policy. We will learn to make nuanced comparative analyses of national approaches to disability policy, and to make our own, context-specific policy recommendations.
This course will provide the student with an understanding of both classic and contemporary research and perspectives on migration and mobility, with special attention to how both inform labor market outcomes. Major topics of concern are how migration intersects with issues of law, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, education, employment discrimination, health, and social networks. Although course content will primarily focus on issues of migration impacting the United States, we will also consider contemporary migration issues of importance in other areas of the world.
This is a capstone seminar for seniors who are interested in graduate or professional study in scientific disciplines that focus on human behavior and social interaction. The intent is to provide seniors with an opportunity to summon, integrate, and apply insights that they have acquired over the course of their undergraduate education, and give prospective graduate students the opportunity to lead discussions in a large introductory lecture course, Six Pretty Good Books. Each seminar member is part of a two or three-person team that leads the discussion together, under the supervision of a graduate teaching assistant. Seminar meetings are devoted to building lesson plans for leading an effective discussion of each of the six books. The authors vary from year to year but include Malcolm Gladwell, Michelle Alexander, Nate Silver, and Nicholas Christakis. All authors have agreed to participate in a Q&A session with the students which seminar members are required to attend.
Unemployment is damaging to individuals, families, and society. Governments around the world have attempted to mitigate these harms, in some countries through generous out-of-work benefits, targeted retraining services for job seekers, and disincentives for employers to lay workers off in the first place. But why is unemployment so persistent in capitalist societies? What does it mean for an individual to be unemployed? What can the US learn from other countries to better combat unemployment and reduce its socially damaging effects? Students will work with community partners to assist the unemployed or conduct policy-relevant research.
Examines major theories of ethics, then applies them to issues in the employment relationship such as genetic screening of job applicants, random drug testing of employees, affirmative action, discipline for off-duty conduct, whistle-blowing, worker safety and cost/benefit analysis, comparable worth, strikes by employees providing crucial services, and crossing a picket line.
This course explores the role of law in prohibiting employment discrimination based on characteristics that include race, sex, gender, national origin, religion, age, and disability. This study will analyze the development of employment discrimination law toward greater inclusion, for example, expanding protection to include a socially-defined concept of gender rather than a biologically defined concept of sex. The course will also analyze the gaps that remain in providing broad and effective protection against discrimination in the workplace and the difficulties individuals and groups face in bringing legal claims.
Both public education and policing and their unions are being challenged by powerful forces. Although these unions are depicted as quite dominant, this course asks whether their prominence (or weaknesses) arise from collective bargaining and lobbying or from political developments they do not seem to control. We will examine the strengths and weaknesses of collective bargaining and politics as teachers and police unions seek to maintain their power bases. Histories of both union movements will be analyzed, and the inextricable link between these unions' growth and American politics since the close of World War 2 will be deconstructed. The recent attacks on these public sector professions force us to reconsider whether collective bargaining truly insulates these unions and their members from the challenges posed.
This course will expose students to a range of readings, speakers, and ideas aimed at understanding the complex interplay of the Congress, White House, regulatory agencies, interest groups, including grass roots organizations, and the impact of a sharply divided Congress and the looming Presidential and Congressional 2024 elections in shaping labor rights, workplace protections, and broader social policies. Through exchanges with speakers, independent research, and assigned readings, students will shape their own understanding of the different branches of government and those organizations seeking to influence policy on behalf of their constituents. Special attention will be given to state legislative actions on redistricting, abortion, and voting rights as a backdrop to the 2024 Campaigns.
This course will review first the 19th and early 20th century US Supreme Court cases to understand how the Government created segregation in America. The first 80 years saw a number of twists and turns, including Brown in 1954. However, the institutional forces and structured momentum created by America's zoning, housing, banking, lending laws and other governmental policies continued to push America into an actual physical segregated landscape that our schools then and now reflect. These developments were certified by a series of US Supreme Courts and state governmental taxation and legal policies that assisted in creating the current state of educational affairs in the US.
Provides students interested in the labor field with the skills necessary to understand and use social science research as it relates to the labor movement. The course's four major goals are to (1) develop the skills to critically evaluate a wide variety of research relating to unions and the workplace; (2) introduce a number of quantitative and qualitative research techniques used by unions and those who study the labor movement; (3) familiarize students with the broad range of library and computer resources that can be used for labor and corporate research; and (4) provide students with an opportunity to design and conduct a research project for a national or local union.
The moral and intellectual origins of the American constitution.
Against great odds, 1,000 low-paid custodians, cooks, bus drivers, animal attendants, and groundskeepers succeeded in organizing a local union at Cornell. This course examines the experience of building a dynamic local union by using the creation and development of Local 2300 UAW at Cornell University as a case study. The history is shared from the grassroots perspective of the service and maintenance staff, and rank and file leadership who organized, bargained, went on strike, and built powerful community coalitions. Students will explore and discuss the primary stages of local union development. We will examine the dilemmas and strategic choices facing worker activists as they progress from unorganized powerlessness and poverty to having collective agency and impact. Additional case studies of innovative union organizing and bargaining campaigns will be introduced for purposes of comparison with aspects of the Cornell UAW history.
In-depth analysis of the Supreme Court decisions that interpret the United States Constitution as it applies in the workplace. Focuses on the Bill of Rights (especially the First, Fourth, Fifth Amendments) and the Fourteenth Amendment, with issues including freedom of speech and association, equal protection, privacy, due process, and other issues in the area of political and civil rights. The course entails a high level of student participation in class discussion, and assignments include a research paper.
This capstone course is open to ILR Global Scholars (GS) during their last semester of their senior year. The course is designed for GS to incorporate their education and experience abroad with the concepts and theories they have gained while at the ILR School. The overarching goal of this class is to bring GS together to collectively reflect on and identify key aspects of intercultural competency related to their personal and cultural growth, academic and professional development and roles as future global citizens. The structure of the course will be group discussions, peer review, and individual reflection papers. The final capstone reflection paper will fulfill the course requirement and the Global Scholars Program final reflection requirement.
Students are eligible for the ILR senior honors program if they: (1) earn a minimum 3.700 cumulative GPA at the end of junior year; (2) propose an honors project, entailing research leading to completion of a thesis, to an ILR faculty member who agrees to act as thesis supervisor; and (3) submit an honors project, endorsed by the proposed faculty sponsor, to the Academic Standards and Integrity Committee. Accepted students embark on a two-semester sequence. The first semester consists of determining a research design, familiarization with germane scholarly literature, and preliminary data collection. The second semester involves completion of the data collection and preparation of the honors thesis. At the end of the second semester, the candidate is examined orally on the completed thesis by a committee consisting of the thesis supervisor and a second faculty member.
All requests for permission to register for an internship must be approved by the faculty member who will supervise the project and the chairman of the faculty member's academic department before submission for approval by the director of off-campus credit programs. Upon approval of the internship, each student will be enrolled in ILRLR 4970, for 4 letter-graded credits for individual research, and for ILRGL 4980, for 8 S/U credits, for completion of a professionally-appropriate learning experience, which is graded by the faculty sponsor.
All requests for permission to register for an internship must be approved by the faculty member who will supervise the project and the chairman of the faculty member's academic department before submission for approval by the director of off-campus credit programs. Upon approval of the internship, each student will be enrolled in ILRGL 4970, for 4 letter-graded credits for individual research, and in ILRLR 4980, for 8 S/U credits, for completion of a professionally-appropriate learning experience, which is graded by the faculty sponsor.
For individual or group research projects conducted under the direction of a member of the ILR faculty, in a special area not covered by regular course offerings. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors with a preceding semester GPA average of 3.0 are eligible to submit projects for approval by the Academic Standards and Integrity Committee. Students should consult with an advisor in the Office of Student Services at the time of course enrollment to arrange for formal submission of their directed study.
A comprehensive introduction to the labor relations systems of the United States and other countries. Covers the determinants of bargaining power, the process of labor agreement negotiation and administration, and assessment of the effects that collective representation exerts on economic and social outcomes. Special consideration is given to the increasing importance of new technology and international factors including global supply chains.
Survey and analysis of the law governing labor relations and employee rights in the workplace. The first half of the course is devoted to labor law and labor-management relations. It examines the legal framework for workers' trade union organizing efforts, collective bargaining, and strikes and lockouts. The second half of the course turns to employment law outside the collective bargaining context. It covers such topics as occupational health and safety, workers' compensation, employment discrimination, at-will versus just cause rules for dismissing employees, non-competition and mandatory arbitration agreements, and other aspects of the individual employer-employee relationship. Also serves as an introduction to judicial and administrative systems.
This course is designed to provide an in-depth understanding of the concepts, tools, methodologies, and resources pivotal to the strategic and effective utilization of qualitative and quantitative data. The course structure is organized around a series of modules, each focusing on distinct analytical methodologies and their potential applications to modern challenges in labor relations. These modules include qualitative, quantitative, and AI-based (e.g., machine learning) research methods. The course's pedagogical approach encourages the practical application of course concepts through hands-on exercises and assignments, enabling students to integrate and contextualize the course content within actual research questions.
This course offers an overview of the structure and politics of social policy in the Global South. It addresses commonalities and differences in social policies across middle- and low-income countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and examines scholarly explanations for social policy adoption, policy design, and social policy change. The course’s approach is comparative, focusing on different regions and country cases in the Global South, but pays special attention to the evolution of social protection in Latin America, where welfare systems are relatively broader in scope. The course explores the types of protections states extend to different groups, particularly focusing on the divide between insiders—meaning formal-sector workers with labor contracts—and outsiders—informal, unemployed, and rural workers.
This course examines outsourcing decisions from a human resources perspective, and the human resource implications of managing workers in increasingly networked organizations. Outsourcing, offshoring, spin-offs, and the use of temporary staffing agencies all create challenges for human resource management. Firms face issues of retaining employee knowledge and skills, coordinating HR policies across multiple subcontractors, and motivating workers on different employment contracts - who in some cases work together within a workplace or virtually. In addition, organizations face increasingly complex decisions concerning the mix of sourcing strategies to use for their own HR functions and processes. The quality and content of these decisions have implications for performance outcomes, as well as for job quality and employee careers. We will analyze these challenges and evaluate strategies to address them from a comparative and international perspective, using industry- and firm-based case studies from North America, Europe, and Asia. The course will end with a discussion of current and future trends, including crowdsourcing, managing the human cloud, and the sharing economy. Some sample company case studies include Boeing, P&G, Toyota, and IKEA.
In this class, we will compare case studies of labor union and other worker-led campaigns based on old and new forms of solidarity, both within countries and transnationally. Each week, we will discuss a different case study through presentations by labor and community organizers and researchers. Students will produce a website with case descriptions, interview transcripts, and other resources.?Past case studies include the Volkswagen and Bank Workers campaigns in the US, international organizing at RyanAir and Amazon in Europe, migrant worker organizing at the Shelter for Foreign workers initiative in South Korea, and?collective action?by app-based workers?in Argentina.
This seminar course will guide students through the process of developing research proposals. Readings, course work, and class discussions will be organized around formulating and refining research questions and hypotheses, building literature reviews, and designing appropriate research methods. We will also discuss techniques for analyzing qualitative data and for presenting research to academic and practitioner audiences. Students will submit a complete research proposal at the conclusion of the course.
The adage “there is power in the union!” has been an important rallying cry for the labor movement. Yet scholars of the labor movement have often struggled to identify what this power actually is and where it comes from. This course offers a survey of social movement and union power theories to explore why and how unions win. The course is built around four dominant theories from sociology and ILR: resource mobilization, the political process model, the power resource approach, and strategic capacity. Movements covered in this exploration will include: the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the United Farm Workers, the United Auto Workers, Justice for Janitors, and gig worker organizing, among others.
Workers, often in alliance with other marginalized groups, have played a major role in shaping modern Latin American politics. This course examines labor-based forms of political representation in Latin America and provides an overview of major historic and contemporary movements across the region, including those that seek to represent and empower traditionally excluded sectors, such as urban and rural workers, informal workers, women, as well as indigenous groups. In this course, students will analyze the conditions that facilitate or inhibit collective mobilization, the connections between various movements and political parties, especially those on the left, and their relationship with the state.
This course focuses on the evolution, current trajectories, and methods to improve labor practices in global supply chains. We will examine the key issue of why, after 25 years of corporate efforts and intensive consumer activism, there have not been sustainable improvements in labor practices in the global supply chains in the apparel industry. Taking both a Corporate Social Responsibility, and Global Value Chains perspective, we will examine a range of problems and issues that inhibit sustainability, and explore new innovative developments that show promise. Several stakeholders from corporations, NGOS, monitoring firms, and/or suppliers will engage with the class, either in person or through videoconferencing. The course will end with an evaluation of approaches that are both innovative and promising. Students will be expected to write position papers on current developments, which will be circulated to multiple stakeholders so that the output from the course is relevant. The course also offers opportunities for students to engage more deeply in research projects that are currently underway.
The course will be thoroughly comparative in order to highlight both the specificity of each country as well as more generalizable dynamics of 21st century development. It will be divided into a number of inter-related modules. After a framing lecture, we will briefly cover the two countries' distinct experiences with colonialism and centralized planning. Then we will move on to dynamics of growth, which will seek to explain the relative success of China in the era of market reforms. In analyzing political consequences, we will assess how new forms of cooperation and conflict have emerged. This will involve attention to both internal dynamics as well as how rapid development has seen an increasing accumulation of political power in the East. It goes without saying that accelerating growth has led to huge social change, resulting in profound reorganizations of Chinese and Indian society. Finally, the course will conclude by returning to our original question-is this indeed The Asian Century? What does the rise of China and India mean for the rest of the world, and how are these two giant nations likely to develop in the future? (ASIAN-SC)
The US-China relationship has emerged as one of the definitive economic and political vectors of the 21st century. There is little question that the US and China will remain the two most powerful polities for decades to come, and in recent years their respective governments have become increasingly hostile. While this imperial rivalry is very real and poses grave threats to humanity, this course aims to transcend methodological nationalism by approaching the US-China relationship from the perspective of workers. In doing so we will interrogate the complex and deeply interwoven set of political, economic, and social linkages between these two capitalist behemoths.
Is the welfare state a protector from capitalism or an accomplice to capitalism? Social safety nets and capitalist markets have a complicated relationship for workers. Healthcare, retirement pensions, unemployment insurance – these provisions protect workers from the risks of getting sick, old, and fired. These same provisions are also tremendous sources of capital, invested into the very employers and asset-managers who pose risks to workers. This contradiction is not an "American thing," but extends to social democracies like the Netherlands who steward one of the largest national capital-funded pensions. This course uncovers these complexities of the welfare state, with special theoretical and empirical attention to labor. Geographically it will focus on the United States, with frequent international comparisons to examine the commonalities and differences of welfare states. And lastly, it will be equal parts sociology and history, illuminating the origins, transformations, and inequalities of the welfare state in the United States.
This course examines the fundamentals of generative artificial intelligence and its potential impact on the future of work. It begins with an overview of how neural networks function, comparing them to earlier technological transformations. The course then looks at how generative AI may influence work, including changes to jobs, worker voice, and power dynamics. Broader societal issues, such as ethics, economic inequality, and governance, are also explored.
This course offers a survey of social movement and union power theories to explore why and how unions win. The course is built around four dominant theories from sociology and ILR: resource mobilization, the political process model, the power resource approach, and strategic capacity. Movements covered in this exploration will include: the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the United Farm Workers, the United Auto Workers, Justice for Janitors, and gig worker organizing, among others. In exploring the wide range of theories from sociology, political science, and labor relations in understanding social and labor movements this course seeks to historicize the current resurgence of union organizing through a comparison of a broad range of movement traditions.
This course is a survey of theories and politics of the labor process exploring how employers organize work, how workers respond to these efforts, and how this shapes industrial labor relations. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution scholars from Marx to Taylor considered how the design of the labor process impacted not only profit but workers' subjective experience of their work and their resistance. The last two decades have again seen significant changes and upheaval in the nature of work-gigification, digital surveillance, and the disruptive specter of generative AI-raising the importance of these questions yet again. Exploring the politics of how work is organized this course seeks to interrogate the historical context of these contemporary debates.
Study of arbitration in the field of labor-management relations, including an analysis of principles and practices, the law of arbitration, the handling of materials in briefs and oral presentations, the conduct of mock arbitration hearing, and the preparation of arbitration opinions and post-hearing briefs.
This course is offered to students interested in acquiring the knowledge, skills and techniques necessary to mediate community and campus disputes. In the first segment of the course, students will be introduced to the guiding principles of mediation and restorative conferencing. A review of the theories of conflict, models of mediation, and the benefits and challenges of each. The role of identity, culture, ethics and impasse in mediation will all be examined and incorporated into simulations and case studies. In the second segment, students will be assigned to observe, mediate, and facilitate cases referred to the Scheinman Institute from Cornell’s Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards (OSCCS), the Tompkins Country Community Dispute Resolution Center, the Ithaca City Small Claims Court, and the Montana Mediation program.
Conflict is an inherent part of organizational life. Nevertheless, organizational members often lack the adequate skills necessary to manage and resolve the host of tensions and disagreements that arise at work. This course is designed to develop and strengthen students' conflict resolution sills with a focus on the mediation of organizational conflicts. As such, the course will provide students with a theoretical and practical understanding of the mediation process. This foundation will then be used to apply mediation concepts and principles to everyday workplace conflict. Given the emphasis on skill building, the course will make extensive use of mediation simulations alongside classroom lectures and discussions.
This course is offered to students interested in furthering their knowledge of mediation, restorative practices, and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes and systems, and has a required prerequisite of The Campus Mediation Practicum I. Students will build on the Campus Mediation Practicum I, which sets the stage for the role mediation and restorative justice can effectively play in facilitating ADR processes in multiple settings. Students will be assigned to mentor CMP I student mediators as well as mediate complex cases referred to the Scheinman Institute from the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards (OSCCS), the Tompkins County Community Dispute Resolution Center, the Ithaca City Small Claims Court, and the Montana Mediation program. Students will also have the opportunity to engage with experienced mediators.
This course reviews U.S. law related to people with disabilities. Students in this course will learn about the nuances of disability law, including civil rights efforts to increase access to employment, public accommodations, education, and equal political and social participation. The course will review landmark case law from the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts, and will review key pieces of legislation like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Rehabilitation Act, Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Key topics will include nondiscrimination in the workplace, access to the political process, and access to justice and due process for people with disabilities. Because this is a law course, students will also learn how to read judicial opinions, interpret precedent, develop and structure legal memoranda, and engage in effective/convincing legal writing and analysis.
Artificial intelligence (AI), computers, and digital technologies including robotics, machine learning, large language models (LLMs), internet-enabled platforms, and other ?high-tech? drivers of automation have revolutionized the nature and organization of work in the U.S., with material implications for workers and their families, among others. This upper-level course begins with a rhetorical inquiry into whether and when the technological change engendered by digitization, information technology, and AI benefits workers. We then consider the broader impact of recent technological advances on manufacturing and fabrication, low- and semi-skilled service work, i.e., restaurant servers and bus drivers, and even on expert and professional work like that to which most of you presumably aspire. Among the central themes is the notion that technology does not unilaterally act upon workers, their employers, or society-at-large. Rather, workers, managers, customers, institutions, and policymakers shape which advances take hold and which do not, the ways that these technologies are deployed in the workplace, and the ways that society can actively mitigate the costs to technological advancement while harnessing its benefits. (MPA-ECONPL, MPA-ENPO, MPA-INTPMN, MPA-PUBNON, MPA-SCITEC, MPA-SOCPOL)
This advanced level mini-course examines several key issues in today's collective bargaining between US private sector employers and unions. Through extensive pre-class readings and podcasts, and during four 3 hour classes, we will trace key developments that have set the table for today's bargaining environment, eg., the deindustrialization of the American economy, the decline of union workforce density, and the rise of defensive collective bargaining; examine resultant wage stagnation and troubled health care and defined benefit pension plans; investigate the effects and intersection of employment law and legislation on collective bargaining and dispute resolution; and consider the emerging arena of unionization in higher education.
Students learn the principles of argumentation and debate. Topics emphasize Internet database research, synthesis of collected data, policy analysis, evidentiary quality, refutation of counter claims, identification of logical fallacies, risk evaluation, framing of issues, and coherent storytelling. Prepares students to work with a great range of opinion and evidence. Emphasizes different viewpoints, including those of different cultures. Assumptions are interrogated.
This course examines the past and future of the European Social Model. Europe has long been known for its strong labor unions and social regulation of labor markets. We will ask to what extent these traditions have been maintained or transformed in the face of market liberalization and integration within the European Union. The class is organized in three parts. In part one, we will discuss major 'national models', including Germany, the Nordic countries, and France - reviewing both the history of these models and recent changes in collective bargaining and labor market institutions. In part two, we will compare major areas of labor market policy across European countries, including pay, parental leave, gender quotas, employment protection, and working time flexibility. In part three, we will examine the process and politics of European integration in the European Union (EU), including extension into Central and Eastern European countries and migration within Europe. The class will conclude with a discussion of challenges facing the EU: support for far right parties; responses to the climate crisis; and geopolitical conflict.
This course introduces students to the history, evolution and trajectory of state-labor relations, labor activism, and the politics of unemployment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). As the region with the highest concentration of non-democratic regimes in the world, the MENA provides a rich context for examining state efforts to control interest representation, and workers' struggles for freedom of association. In addition, the region features diverse political economic systems, making it ideal for examining the interaction between resource endowments and labor market dynamics. Finally, the region is ripe for the study of youth activism and the mobilization of the unemployed given that youth unemployment rates are higher in the MENA than any other world region.
This course examines international labor law through the rules, organizations and institutions that shape global governance of labor and explores the obstacles workers face in exercising internationally recognized labor rights. The International Labor Organization (ILO) is the United Nations organization mandated to design and supervise international labor rights; yet governments have plucked some of those rights out of the ILO governance system and dropped them into their own legal instruments, including their bilateral and multilateral trade agreements that are backed with economic sanctions. The course will also consider private governance initiatives that workers and labor organizations have sought to secure rights and corporate accountability where public governance efforts have failed.
This course examines popular constructions of race and how they inform labor and inequality in a variety of national contexts. Assigned course materials deal with the national history out of which contemporary understandings of race arise as well as power dynamics reflected in the maintenance and/or transformation of racial categories and how those power dynamics affect the nature of work, labor markets, and the distribution of social and economic resources. Some of the core questions addressed during this course are: How have racial categories and understandings about race changed over time? What are the common aspects of race and racial formation that cut across the selected nations? How are labor markets and occupations shaped and informed by race?
This course will provide the student with an understanding of both classic and contemporary research and perspectives on migration and mobility, with special attention to how both inform labor market outcomes. Major topics of concern are how migration intersects with issues of law, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, education, employment discrimination, health, and social networks. Although course content will primarily focus on issues of migration impacting the United States, we will also consider contemporary migration issues of importance in other areas of the world.
Unemployment is damaging to individuals, families, and society. Governments around the world have attempted to mitigate these harms, in some countries through generous out-of-work benefits, targeted retraining services for job seekers, and disincentives for employers to lay workers off in the first place. But why is unemployment so persistent in capitalist societies? What does it mean for an individual to be unemployed? What can the US learn from other countries to better combat unemployment and reduce its socially damaging effects? Students will work with community partners to assist the unemployed or conduct policy-relevant research.
This course explores the role of law in prohibiting employment discrimination based on characteristics that include race, sex, gender, national origin, religion, age, and disability. This study will analyze the development of employment discrimination law toward greater inclusion, for example, expanding protection to include a socially-defined concept of gender rather than a biologically defined concept of sex. The course will also analyze the gaps that remain in providing broad and effective protection against discrimination in the workplace and the difficulties individuals and groups face in bringing legal claims.
Both public education and policing and their unions are being challenged by powerful forces. Although these unions are depicted as quite dominant, this course asks whether their prominence (or weaknesses) arise from collective bargaining and lobbying or from political developments they do not seem to control. We will examine the strengths and weaknesses of collective bargaining and politics as teachers and police unions seek to maintain their power bases. Histories of both union movements will be analyzed, and the inextricable link between these unions' growth and American politics since the close of World War 2 will be deconstructed. The recent attacks on these public sector professions force us to reconsider whether collective bargaining truly insulates these unions and their members from the challenges posed.
This course will review first the 19th and early 20th century US Supreme Court cases to understand how the Government created segregation in America. The first 80 years saw a number of twists and turns, including Brown in 1954. However, the institutional forces and structured momentum created by America's zoning, housing, banking, lending laws and other governmental policies continued to push America into an actual physical segregated landscape that our schools then and now reflect. These developments were certified by a series of US Supreme Courts and state governmental taxation and legal policies that assisted in creating the current state of educational affairs in the US.
Provides students interested in the labor field with the skills necessary to understand and use social science research as it relates to the labor movement. The course's four major goals are to (1) develop the skills to critically evaluate a wide variety of research relating to unions and the workplace; (2) introduce a number of quantitative and qualitative research techniques used by unions and those who study the labor movement; (3) familiarize students with the broad range of library and computer resources that can be used for labor and corporate research; and (4) provide students with an opportunity to design and conduct a research project for a national or local union. (MHA-EL)
Against great odds, 1,000 low-paid custodians, cooks, bus drivers, animal attendants, and groundskeepers succeeded in organizing a local union at Cornell. This course examines the experience of building a dynamic local union by using the creation and development of Local 2300 UAW at Cornell University as a case study. The history is shared from the grassroots perspective of the service and maintenance staff, and rank and file leadership who organized, bargained, went on strike, and built powerful community coalitions. Students will explore and discuss the primary stages of local union development. We will examine the dilemmas and strategic choices facing worker activists as they progress from unorganized powerlessness and poverty to having collective agency and impact. Additional case studies of innovative union organizing and bargaining campaigns will be introduced for purposes of comparison with aspects of the Cornell UAW history.
In-depth analysis of the Supreme Court decisions that interpret the United States Constitution as it applies in the workplace. Focuses on the Bill of Rights (especially the First, Fourth, Fifth Amendments) and the Fourteenth Amendment, with issues including freedom of speech and association, equal protection, privacy, due process, and other issues in the area of political and civil rights. The course entails a high level of student participation in class discussion, and assignments include a research paper.
This course examines the theories that inform the field of industrial relations internationally, including the institutional tradition of economics, Marxist social science, and neighboring disciplines of sociology and political science. It explores how these theories have historically shaped both the research and practical work of industrial relations scholars. Students are challenged to reflect on what a good theory is.
Conflict and its management in organizations has received a great deal of scholarly attention within a number of disciplinary domains including industrial relations, law, organizational behavior, sociology and economics. Interestingly, insights from this research are rarely integrated across disciplinary boundaries. In an effort to synthesize and integrate scholarly insights and findings this course will examine the interdisciplinary research on conflict and conflict management. As such readings for the course will be drawn from a range of fields and perspectives, including industrial relations, human resources, organizational behavior, psychology and sociology, reflecting the diverse approaches taken to the study of conflict and its management in organizations.
The object of our inquiry is labor: as an activity, a class position, a social movement, an institution, a political subject. A sociology of labor must take as its charge identifying the historically specific constitution of labor in relationship to processes of capitalist development, colonialism, gendered and racialized forms of domination, culture, and technology. Integrating an account of such broader social phenomena reveals insights into labor that would not be possible were we to restrict our inquiry to the workplace. But as one of the fundamental social categories, the concrete manifestation of multifarious labor in any given setting is simultaneously a window onto the basic architecture of society.
This course reviews major themes in the anthropological study of work and political economy. What does it mean to work? What is work, and what are its politics? How do everyday acts of labor sit within broader political economic processes? These are questions that are attuned to both classic issues in political economy and the most recent debates that surround work and its future. Moving across different geographical and historical contexts, we will seek to unpack work and its classed, gendered, and racialized dimensions. Through a discussion of classic and recent ethnographic and theoretical texts, we will examine what it might mean to work well with others, and what labor might look like in a future defined by intensified forms of loss and uncertainty.
This doctoral-level course examines technology and technological change-be it the mechanization of coal mines or the recent onslaught of artificial intelligence-through the lens of work and employment research. Students will consume, critique, and produce theoretically-informed analyses of the interplay of technology and industrial relations structures and processes. While the class emphasizes a pluralist, multi-disciplinary approach, we will draw readings and inspiration from Marxist/critical perspectives as well as from the mainstream human resource management, organizational behavior, economics, and sociology literatures. In addition to developing a scholarly paper suitable for external peer review, students will draft a journal-style review of a freshly-published monograph in the intersection of technology and work and employment.
Source: Cornell University's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 61
