Improve your leadership skills with UMSL’s spring online Labor courses

The University of Missouri at St. Louis is offering two online Labor education courses this spring as part of its Labor Studies Certificate Program.

Classes begin Jan. 19. This spring’s course options include:

• Negotiation, Collective Bargaining and Dispute Resolution –This course explores the process of collective bargaining (contract negotiations) from the origins of the laws that govern the process to terminology and basic strategies. Students will take a close look at the legal constraints on the process, the economic factors influencing the power dynamics, the strategies and techniques of bargaining, and they will explore the dispute resolution processes.

• Workers and Globalizing – This course investigates the effects of globalization on the working class. Globalization is examined through the lens of economic and political neo-liberalism and how its impacts are experienced at the local and individual level. The impacts of neoliberalism are viewed through historical and personal narratives before political and economic critiques are offered. The course closes by examining workers’ collective responses to neo-liberalism and globalization.

The UMSL Labor Studies Program gives current and future union leaders, representatives and activists the background and skills needed to deal with the changing workplace and economy.

Students have the opportunity to develop skills of analysis, leadership and organizing that will provide an equal footing with counterparts in the corporate and political world. Completion of the program earns 18 hours toward a degree and a Certificate in Labor Studies.

For more information or to register, contact Doug Swanson, the UMSL Labor Studies coordinator, at 314-516-6698 or swansondj@missoui.edu.