The Worker Institute

The Strategic Leadership Initiative focuses on labor movement leadership development, strategy design and organizational change in unions, professional associations and other worker organizations.

The initiative seeks to engage with leaders at the highest levels of labor and worker formations that are committed to organizational transformation and interested in innovative strategies. This encompasses four broad areas of work:

The Precarious Workforce Initiative focuses on the labor rights and socioeconomic conditions of low-wage and contingent workers, who receive little or no benefits and have largely no institutional or legal protection.

These workers constitute the most vulnerable segment of the workforce. Their ranks include, but are not limited to, day laborers, immigrants, domestic workers, young workers, the unemployed and the formerly incarcerated.

The Labor Leading on Climate Initiative advances knowledge, policies, and practices to enhance the role of labor and working people in addressing the environmental and climate crises. The initiative's efforts focus on building a truly sustainable society and economy.

The initiative also helps workers’ rights advocates to better understand the employment and labor implications of environmental, climate and sustainability issues through a variety of activities:

Union Communication Services (UCS), North America’s premier publisher and distributor of labor education materials, is now powered by The Worker Institute at Cornell. Since 1981, UCS has produced hands-on tools that help unions and worker rights groups build their organizations and respond to day-to-day challenges on the job.

Steward Update newsletter, published six times a year by Union Communication Services (UCS) at The Worker Institute, upgrades union stewards' skills and rewards them for their efforts on behalf of the union.  Every issue is packed with new, helpful information and advice.

Visit the Steward Update order page on the Union Communciation Services website.

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Through the UCS Labor's Bookstore at laborbooks.com, The Worker Institute offers a wide range of book titles, hand-picked for their usefulness and interest to union leaders, activists, and rank-and-file members. You’ll find books that help develop skills (negotiating, communicating, handling grievances), enrich your knowledge (labor history, current issues), and build commitment to the union.  UCS books are divided into eleven categories; click on the category you’d like to explore to visit the corresponding section at laborbooks.com: