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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
Fanning The Flames (After Lighting The Spark): Multi-Trade Comet Programs, Jeffrey Grabelsky, Adam Pagnucco, Steve Rockafellow
Fanning The Flames (After Lighting The Spark): Multi-Trade Comet Programs, Jeffrey Grabelsky, Adam Pagnucco, Steve Rockafellow
Jeffrey Grabelsky
[Excerpt] The COMET (Construction Organizing Membership Education Training) is an educational program utilized by building trades unions to generate rank and file support for organizing new members. Since 1996, the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO has been sponsoring COMET training in multi-trade settings for its fifteen affiliates. Between 1997 and 1998, the Department undertook a systematic evaluation of its multi-trade COMET programs to determine their impact on attitudes toward organizing as well as on the nature and extent of organizing activities. This article summarizes the lessons the Department learned. Among other conclusions, the evaluation reaffirmed that COMET …
Bottom-Up Organizing In The Trades: An Interview With Mike Lucas, Ibew Director Of Organizing, Jeff Grabelsky
Bottom-Up Organizing In The Trades: An Interview With Mike Lucas, Ibew Director Of Organizing, Jeff Grabelsky
Jeffrey Grabelsky
[Excerpt] Like the bottom-up organizers who built the IBEW 100 years ago by traveling from city to city, working at their trade and preaching the union creed, Lucas has been around the block. From Florida to Oklahoma, Indiana to Tennessee, he worked from 1954 to 1959 as a member of the Laborers and Teamsters unions. He began his organizing career in the utility construction industry, and first volunteered his talents to the IBEW in 1960 by organizing the manufacturing workers at a new Studebaker plant in Bloomington, Indiana, which he had recently helped build as a union electrician. He served …
Building And Construction Trades Unions: Are They Built To Win?, Jeff Grabelsky
Building And Construction Trades Unions: Are They Built To Win?, Jeff Grabelsky
Jeffrey Grabelsky
[Excerpt] The evidence of labor's declining power in the economic and political arenas is increasingly clear. Despite the tenacious efforts of talented leaders over the past ten years, the labor movement has still failed to turn the proverbial cornet. Some labor leaders now believe that a dramatic change in strategic direction may be necessary to revitalize labor's fortunes. The emerging debate about labor's future touches every sector of the movement. The building and construction trades are no exception.