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Certificate Basics

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    Required Courses

    18 continuing education units
    Register for individual workshops that fit your schedule in Law, History, Bargaining, and electives. 

    An advanced certificate is awarded to those who complete an additional 9 continuing education units. 

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    Time to Complete

    18 months
    Time participants have to complete the entire certificate program

Certificate Details

Overview

The Cornell ILR Online Labor Studies Program provides busy union activists with an opportunity to take continuing education units without regard to their location or work schedules. While there is no physical classroom there is considerable student-to-student and student-to-instructor interaction, making for lively discussions and group learning.

Courses advance students' knowledge about the issues that matter most to their day-to-day roles and include Collective Bargaining, Labor History, Labor/Employment Law, Contemporary Labor Issues, and Contract Administration.

Participants can earn a Certificate and an Advanced Certificate of Labor Studies.

Adjunct faculty are proud members of the Cornell Adjunct Faculty Alliance, NYSUT, AFT, and AFL-CIO.

Prerequisites

A Certificate of Labor Studies can be earned by successfully completing 18 continuing education units in the following areas

  • Law (Labor Law, Employment Law, or Labor Relations in the Public Sector) - one course
  • History (Labor History or Labor & Film) - one course
  • Bargaining (Collective Bargaining, or Contract Administration) - one course
  • Electives (Labor, Government and Politics, Unions and Diversity, and others) - courses

Additionally, an Advanced Certificate of Labor Studies will be awarded to those who complete an additional 9.0 continuing education units offered in the program in any subject area. Each course carries 3.0 continuing education units.

Our on-line continuing education units are structured so that you can log-on at any particular time or day throughout the week.  The system is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Core curriculum

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Labor Relations in the Public Sector

Part of the Online Labor Studies Program which allows busy union activists to take college credit courses regardless of their location or work schedules, this 11-week course is designed to acquaint labor relations professionals, union members, and union stewards with a basic understanding of public sector labor relations.

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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Private Sector Labor Law

Part of the Online Labor Studies Program this course surveys the major areas of the law as it applies to workers and unions in the private sector. Students will concentrate on major provisions of the NLRB, examining how NLRB and Federal Courts have interpreted the national labor laws.

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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Introduction to Collective Bargaining

Part of the Online Labor Studies Program, this course examines the principles of contract bargaining including bargaining environments and standards used in negotiations. Students will learn to prepare bargaining demands, cost economic items, draft non-economic language, negotiate economic and non-economic issues, and resolve a bargaining impasse.

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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Advanced Collective Bargaining

This online for-credit course helps union activists build practical skills needed in collective bargaining today through role-plays and mock bargaining with students across the country. Organizations benefit from union members learning bargaining skills in a safe environment instead of at bargaining tables which can impact the entire workplace.

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    Live Online
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    $625

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Register for Advanced Collective Bargaining

Contract Administration

The contract lies at the center of day-to-day union practice. How can union leaders and rank and file members ensure that the contract is honored and not circumvented? Students in this online for-credit course will learn how to resolve problems that are contract-based by effectively utilizing grievance procedures.

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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Labor History

Labor History can be understood from the perspectives of both union history and the social, cultural, and political life of workers. Here we explore not only union organizing, collective bargaining, and labor legislation, but also what workers thought, how they work and lived, and their impact on the larger society.
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    $625

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Register for Labor History

Labor and Film

Part of the Online Labor Studies Program this course examines the history of unions in the US through the use of film. Students will explore the various social issues raised by each film. Each week we will watch a film, analyze it, and discuss our reactions.

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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Workplace Negotiations: Step-By-Step Bargaining

The course will cover the theory and practice of negotiation as it applies to workplace and business situations. Students will use actual contracts and participate in negotiation exercises. The focus is on giving students practice in bargaining a union contract with an employer. Students will be participating in at least two negotiation exercises and will be asked to write an essay on their negotiating position in each exercise.

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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Elective curriculum

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Building Effective Unions: Motivating and Organizing Union

 This course, part of the Online Labor Studies Program, examines the history of workers' efforts to form unions. Discussions focus on how unions can "unionize" their members so they become participants in the mobilization of other workers to support the values of the labor movement.

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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Contemporary Labor Issues

This course is part of the Certificate of Labor Studies. With no prerequisites required, this online course focuses on the revitalization of the labor movement. We’ll discuss the gig economy; new restrictions on unions, unions’ responses; laws affecting workers and bargaining in NYS; generational differences in the workforce; and more. 

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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Learn more about Contemporary Labor Issues

Effective Communications At Work

This course, part of the Online Labor Studies Program, focuses on how to develop skills to improve the effectiveness of your communication relationships and enhance the quality of your life. The class will be highly participatory and include the most crucial readings on effective communications for working people.

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    Live Online
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    $625

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Register for Effective Communications At Work

Introduction to Occupational Safety and Health

This course is part of the Certificate of Labor Studies and requires no prior familiarity with the subject matter. This online class introduces participants to workplace hazards, their regulations/recommendations, and hazard control measures. An important benefit will be improving your ability to recognize hazards and to use hazard evaluation tools.

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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Leadership in Unions

Part of the Online Labor Studies Program this for-credit class prepares participants for assuming responsibilities in their organization by developing the skills and abilities required of union leaders. Each participant will prepare a plan for improving how their local union functions.

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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Managing Internal Union Conflict

An introduction to dispute resolution theory and practice, this course examines the nature and sources of conflict and the role of negotiations, mediation, arbitration and fact-finding in the resolution of disputes.

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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The U.S. Worker and Global Industrial Relations

This class is designed to provide union members, officers, and staff with working knowledge of the operations and impact of corporate globalization both in specific local situations (ie, the threatened relocation of a plant), global capital flows, and the shaping of the increasingly unequal US economy.

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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Unions Role in Lives of Workers

Part of the Online Labor Studies Program, this course recognizes how unions as an institution protect the interests of workers on the job and in society. Students will focus on Social Movement Unionism that looks at the working conditions of members and also the social issues affecting all working people.

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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Learn more about Unions Role in Lives of Workers

Online Communications and Zoom Presentation Skills

The objective of this course is to teach communication skills needed at all levels of leadership in the local union. Key topics include: Online communications as a union building strategy; developing online classes using Canvas/presentations using Zoom or PowerPoint; public speaking; effective Zoom or Digital meetings; developing media strategies.

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Building Stronger Unions

This course considers implications of expanded membership diversity and expectations of just treatment for organizational fairness and inclusion – i.e. diversity, equity and inclusion in unions. Emphasis will be placed on developing knowledge, awareness and skills and facilitate communication around difficult issues of race and other dimensions of difference.

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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Race and Labor History

In this asynchronous online history course, we will explore race and organized labor in US History through an analysis of three 21st-century films. To understand race theory we will study excerpts of Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s 1986 book Racial Formation in the United States; for an overview of labor history, we will study Jeffrey Helgeson’s essay “American Labor and Working-Class History, 1900-1945.” The three films we will review include 10,000 Black Men Named George (2002), Birth of a Nation (2016), and Working: What We Do All Day (2023).

Dates for sessions will be posted as soon as they are available.

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