Undergraduate Admissions

I wanted to participate in the credit internship program for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to get some work in the field of Industrial Relations. I wanted to make sure it was something I was interested in doing or pursuing after I graduated from ILR. Second, I saw the credit internship program as a way to test drive a career. I ended up working at T&G, the Transport and General workers union in England. I am interested in union work. I thought that would be a really good way to see if this would be something I’m actually interested in doing.

Historically they’ve represented people in the transportation sector, for example the people who drive trucks—kind of like the teamsters here in the U.S. They also represent dock workers but more recently they’ve expanded to include a huge range of occupations from people working in meat processing plants to people who clean the buildings in downtown London. In May of last year they merged with another union in the UK—Amicus, which in the past has represented, among others, lots of people in manufacturing and engineering. They’re now largest union in the UK—representing people throughout the economy.

From the outset, I knew I was interested in social justice or union type work and there are plenty of opportunities for that type of work through the credit internship program. My first problem was in just selecting the organizations that I wanted to apply to. I wanted to go abroad and that just seemed like the logical choice to me.

I spent the first quarter of my internship working in the organizing department doing a variety of things. I did a lot of reconnaissance work, For instance, let’s say there’s this building in downtown London and they want to figure out what companies clean for that building so they can go and make contacts among the workers. I would go there, stand outside the building, find someone who cleans the building, talk to them, get information—who they work for, how many people are there, what ethnic group the companies usually hires. I got a feel for what sort of issues are in the workplace and then report that back to the organizing unit at the central office. Also in the organizing department I did a lot of work going to demonstrations and giving support to other unions that were organizing cleaners such as the SEIU here. I spent the rest of the remaining three quarters of my time in the research department.

I did everything from working on bargaining briefs for people in the manufacturing sector—things like trying to calculate the cost of living in England in various regions—trying to determine how rising prices in different regions throughout London would affect everyone’s living costs.

I also I did some policy work on the EU level—determining the status of laws regarding temporary agency workers in all of the EU countries. This was then used to help political lobbying efforts in the UK. I also did some basic corporate research trying to identify leverage points within companies that would enable the union to put more pressure on them to recognize the union. I did work in preparation for targeting different companies in the civil aviation sector—searching out all the information on the key civil aviation players in the UK. Probably one of the most interesting things I did was work on the T&G submission to the low pay commission which sets the minimum wage in England. I was able to get a really, really broad range of experiences.

My internship experience has influenced my career interests. It is pushing my interests toward the field of social justice. In fact, I’m going to be going back to London in January to interview the people that I worked with in the past as part of my research.

I strongly recommend the internship program. If I could, I would make it a requirement in the ILR school just because I think it is so important to gain some sort of experience in the field. It’s an extremely valuable experience and I don’t see why anybody wouldn’t take this opportunity. There’s such a huge variety of positions available. I know there are partnerships with the National Labor Relations Board all over the country. You can also work in other fields of government. One of my friends worked at EEOC in LA. If you’re interested in social justice work, there are unions from all over the country; whether it’s locals in Ithaca to national offices in Washington, DC. There are opportunities at the International Labor Organization in Geneva. I think that last semester somebody went and studied with the ILO to Kenya. I’ve heard in the past, people have gone to Argentina to work with rubber workers there. There are just so many opportunities that it’s kind of a challenge to narrow down what you’re looking for.

After I graduate in May, I’m going to be working with the National Labor Relations Board in Seattle. I’ve worked there for the past two summers as a part of their co-op program. But because of my experience at the T&G, I definitely see myself working in the labor movement in the future.