HISTORY

The Labor Studies program was revived in 1991, under a new curriculum, with the intention of providing the working men and women of Maryland a place to get training in unions skills and history. The program offers a combination of credit and continuing education programs and now has over 100 workers enrolled in the credit programs. Special classes, in both credit and continuing education, are constantly being developed. 

The program also runs special events, which are open to the community and offer new perspectives on workplace problems.

In April 2000, the program featured labor muralist Mike Alewitz, discussing his project in Baltimore to create murals about the famous leader in the Underground Railway, Harriet Tubman.

In April 1999, the program featured a program on sweatshop labor, with Melinda St. Louis, of the Campaign For labor Rights.

Bill Barry was hired as Program Director in April, 1997, after working as a part-time instructor in the program for four years. Barry had  worked as a Regional Organizing Director for the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers (ACTWU), out of St Louis, Pottsville, PA and Baltimore. Prior to the work with ACTWU, he was an Adminstrative Officer for the Philadelphia Newspaper Guild, a Field Organizer for the United Electrical Workers (UE) in New Bedford, MA, Los Angeles, Charlotte and Winston-Salem, NC, in Greenville, SC and in Philadelphia and Wilkes-Barre, PA, and a Union Rep for SEIU Local 495, in Worcester, MA. He was first sworn in as a member of the Carpenters Local 107 in Worcester, MA in January, 1968. 

Barry is a long-time member of Workers Education Local 189, CWA.  The Labor Studies Program was initially founded by the late Everett Miller, in the 1970s, and was dedicated to spreading unionism and union training.  There is an Advisory Board of 35 people, most of them union officers and staff, including several who are enrolled as students, who meet twice a year to help develop new programs and to recruit students for the credit courses.