Directory

Kate Bronfenbrenner joined the extension faculty at the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University in 1993. As the Director of Labor Education Research, Kate teaches and conducts research in the areas of organizing, collective bargaining, contract administration, labor research, and leadership development for national and regional unions as well as students in the resident graduate and undergraduate programs at Cornell ILR.

Prior to coming to Cornell, Kate was an Assistant Professor and Labor Education Coordinator for the Department of Labor Studies and Industrial Relations, Penn State University, and worked for many years as an organizer and business agent with the United Woodcutters Association in Mississippi and SEIU in Boston.

Kate is the co-author and editor of several books on union strategies including Union Organizing in the Public Sector: An Analysis of State and Local Elections, Organizing to Win: New Research on Union Strategies and Ravenswood: The Steelworkers' Victory and the Revival of American Labor.

Kate has also published articles and monographs on employer and union behavior in public and private sector organizing and first contract campaigns, unions and the contingent workforce, union leadership development, women in the labor movement, and labor and the global economy. Because of her expertise in contemporary labor issues and her research on union and employer behavior in certification election campaigns, Kate has been brought in to testify as an expert witness at Labor Department and Congressional hearings and is frequently quoted in the major news media.

In October 1998 Kate was the first recipient of the Labor Party's Karen Silkwood award and in January 1999 she received the Industrial Relations Research Association's Young Scholar Award.