UMass Boston

Undergraduate Programs

The Labor Studies Major and Minor

What Is Labor Studies?

Labor Studies is an interdisciplinary program that examines work, the workplace, workers, and their organizations. Drawing on the fields of economics, history, political science, sociology, and other disciplines, courses in Labor Studies deal with such questions as:

  • What roles do unions play in affecting the well-being of workers and of society more generally? How and why have those roles changed over the course of economic development in the United States and elsewhere?
  • How do changes in the global economy affect work and workers?
  • In the history of the United States and other countries, how have workers’ rights changed over time? How have broad political and economic developments affected those rights?
  • What opportunities and challenges do workers face as racial, gender, and ethnic diversity changes in the labor force?
  • What are effective methods of worker organizing and collective bargaining by unions? How are organizing and the practices of unions affected by changes in the larger society?

By focusing on these sorts of questions, the UMass Boston Labor Studies Program prepares students to provide critical analysis of historical controversies and to think strategically about social, political, and economic change. The program provides students with strong foundations for a variety of occupations and also prepares students to be active participants in their own labor and community organizations. Indeed, students, faculty, and staff in Labor Studies are often members of and active participants in the organized labor movement and related social justice organizations.

What Are the Study Options?

Labor Studies Major and Labor Studies Minor

The Labor Studies Program offers a BA for students who major in the program and also a minor for students majoring in another program at UMass Boston. While both the major and the minor require students to take a set of courses offered by the Labor Studies Program, both also allow students to fill out their program with related courses in various College of Liberal Arts departments.

Students who are neither majoring nor minoring in labor studies are of course welcome to take individual courses in the program. Also, the program offers a First Year Seminar and an Intermediate Seminar.

Students majoring or minoring in labor studies (or simply taking courses in the program) will find that it provides a useful foundation for employment in a variety of occupations, including, for example:

  • Leadership, administrative, and research positions in labor unions and other social justice organizations
  • Legal work, including but not only as lawyers
  • Positions in government at state, local, and national levels
  • Positions in non-government organizations (NGOs), working on issues from the neighborhood to the international level
  • Teaching and related educational work at various levels.

The Labor Studies Program develops students’ analytic skills presentation capacities, and abilities for group work, all of which are foundations for a great variety of interesting occupations.  Moreover, the program provides a solid foundation for post-graduate study in MA and PhD labor programs or related social science fields. And, regardless of one’s occupation, the Labor Studies Program will prepare students to take part more effectively in labor organizations, community groups, and other social justice organizations.

What are the requirements for the major?

To major in labor studies a student is required to complete eleven (11) courses, at least six (6) of which must be labor studies courses. The remaining five (5) may be labor studies courses or courses from the list of courses in related fields below.  Note: the list of related courses below is just a sample of courses that count towards the major – if you want another course from a different department to count for Labor Studies just get the approval of the Director.

 Majors must take:

  • LABOR 210 – Labor and Working Class History
  • ECON 101 – Introduction to MicroeconomicsOR ECON 102 – Introduction to Macroeconomics OR AMSTY 101 -- Popular Culture in America OR HIST 266-- American History since 1877
  • One of the following research methods courses:
    • ANTH 348 - ETHNOGRAPHIC INQUIRY: INTRODUCTION TO QUALITATIVE FIELD RESEARCH
    • ANTH 352 -  Applied Social Anthropology 
    • LABOR 410 – Action Research for Strategic Organizing
    • HIST 481 -  Research & Methods: Senior Research Methods in History
    • POLSCI 350 – Political Research Methods
    • SOC 351L – Methods of Sociological Research
  • A capstone course for labor studies, which may be one of the following:
    • LABOR 340 – Placement in Workers’ Organizations
    • Independent Study in Labor Studies (with prior approval by the director of labor studies)
    • A capstone course from another program (with prior approval by the director of labor studies)

Other labor studies courses that would count toward the major are:

  1. LABOR 120L – Sports and Inequality
  2. Labor 240L Work, Revolution, and Environment in Latin America
  3. Labor 250L: The Hands that Feed Us: Food, Labor, Race, and Migration in the U.S.
  4. LABOR 315 – Labor, Community, and Social Justice Organizing
  5. LABOR 325 – Workers’ Rights and Human Rights
  6. LABOR 330 – Diversity Among Labor: Race, Class, Gender and Work
  7. LABOR 335 – Globalization and Labor
  8. LABOR 345 – Sex and Labor Trafficking in a Global Economy
  9. Labor 390 Working-Class Boston

Courses from related fields that would count toward the major are:

  • ANTH 238 – Empire and Imperialism: From Rome to the War in Iraq
  • ANTH 346 – Culture, Globalization, and the Environment
  • ANTH 349 – Anthropology of Development
  • ANTH 353 – Urban Anthropology
  • AFRSTY 350L – Race, Class, and Gender: Issues in Diversity*Cross listed with AMST 350L
  • AMST 360 – Work, Society, and Culture in Modern America
  • AMST 405 – The Immigrant Experience
  • AMST 440 – U.S. in Global Context
  • ASAMST 223L – Asians in the United States
  • ASAMST 423L– Boston's Asian American Communities
  • ECON 310 – Introduction to Marxist Analysis
  • ECON 336 – Economic Development
  • ECON 339 – Political Economy of International Migration
  • ECON 390 – Labor Market Economics
  • ECON 391 – Unions and Collective Bargaining
  • ECON 394 – Sex Segregated Labor Markets
  • ENGL 373 – Working-Class Literature
  • POLISCI 320 – Women, Politics, and Policy
  • POLISCI 322 – Politics of Poverty and U.S. Social Welfare Policy
  • POLISCI 335 – Law and Public Policy
  • SOC 231– Social Class and Inequality
  • SOC 232 – The Sociology of Work
  • SOC 331– The Sociology of Social Movements
  • SOC 335 – Political Sociology
  • WGS 355L – Women, Development, and Globalization
  • WGS 360 – Gender, Culture, and Power
  • WGS 394 – Women in U.S. Social Movements

Other courses from related programs might be appropriate for labor studies majors to count toward their requirements for fulfilling the major. With the approval of the director of labor studies, such courses could be counted.

Additional Requirements for the Major

To complete the major in labor studies, a student must have at least a 2.0 GPA in all courses that are counted toward the major (i.e., both labor studies courses and courses in related fields that are counted toward the major.)

In each course that counts toward the major in labor studies (whether a labor studies course or a course in a related field), a student’s grade must be C- or higher.

No courses taken pass/fail can count toward fulfillment of the major requirements.

No more than six transfer courses can be counted toward the major, and no more than three transfer courses can be substitutes for the six labor studies courses that are required for the major.

No more than two courses can be double-counted with another major.

No more than 9 credits of independent study and internships can be accepted toward the major. For independent study courses to count toward the major, prior approval by the director of labor studies is necessary.

* Some of the listed courses from other departments require prerequisites. For several of these the prerequisite is Sociology 101 or Economics 101 or 102 or both. In some other cases, 30 prior credits is a pre-requisite. Students should avail themselves of courses’ prerequisites in planning their schedules. (In some cases, especially if the student has advanced standing, an instructor will be willing to waive the formal pre-requisite, but this is by no means automatic.)

Students are encouraged to take LABOR 210: Labor and Working Class History, early in their programs, as this course serves as a good foundation for other courses in the program.

While labor studies majors are required to take only one of these two basic economics courses, they are encouraged to take both—one fulfilling the requirement and the other as a free elective.

Labor Leadership Certificate

The Professional Certificate in Labor Leadership is a valuable credential for emerging leaders in the labor movement. The certificate program fosters group learning across different unions, communities, and economic sectors. Students may enroll in the certificate program as either a pre-baccalaureate or post-baccalaureate option.

To complete the certificate in labor studies, students must take six labor studies courses. Courses are regularly offered in the early evening, which allows people with full-time employment to engage in the program.

As with the BA and minor in labor studies, the certificate program equips graduates for work in unions, labor organizations, community-based organizations, and government and public service. The certificate program also prepares students for further education in these fields; in particular, many certificate students who have not already obtained a BA, go on to do so.

Especially important to many participants, the certificate provides excellent career advancement opportunities for rank-and-file union members who aspire to leadership positions, for current union staff seeking greater skills and credentials for career advancement, and for younger workers and activists seeking to become more engaged in organized labor.

Labor Leadership Certificate Learning Goals

Students who have completed the certificate program should have developed a broad set of competencies. They should, for example, be able to:

  • Demonstrate an understanding of the history of work and the labor movement, and draw from that history in analyzing contemporary opportunities and challenges facing working people and the labor movement
  • Explain the role of labor and workers’ organizations in different nations, as well as the relative pros and cons of different organizational structures
  • Understand different models of organizing and collective bargaining, and explain their strengths and weaknesses
  • Explain the changing nature of work in the global economy and describe the emerging responses from organized labor internationally
  • Demonstrate the ability to utilize research and technological tools to analyze and participate in the contemporary labor movement

Contact

For more information on the Labor Studies Program, contact the Labor Resource Center: 
email: laborresourcecenter@umb.edu
phone: 617.287.7267