Labour leadership education

American state whiversities in a very real sense are service organisations. They are obligated, particularly through their extension divisions, to disseminate the fruits of research and teaching among the diverse groups found in every state. B follows, then, that the proper long-range goal of state univer sities in labor education is application of the academic disel plines to solution of the practical problems trade unions and their leaders face.

State universities attack this task from two general points of view: 1. on-the-job and internal needs and problems that, for the most part, arise out of the employment contact, and 2. broad economic, political and social problems which face all organized segments of the community and to the solution of which all organized community groups must contribute.

This book attempts to explain what trade union labe educators active in New Jersey and members of the Rutgers Institute of Management and Labor Relations Labor Program staff together have done to create the kind of labor education that will enable the trade union student to advance from one level to another, adding both to his knowledge of subject matter and to his skill and technique in labor education in a systematic, disciplined manner.

The problems union-university labor education programs encounter are rooted in three uniquely American concepts which condition both the American labor movement and the way in which that movement carries on educational activities as one means of solving its problems.

First, under the collective bargaining process, it is as sumed that issues about which labor and management disagree are settled between them with a minimum of third party or government interference. Since the end of World War II, issues over which labor and management bargain have increased in scope. This situation demands trade union leaders who know much more about the increasingly complex technical problems that the American economy faces. Without such knowledge, these leaders cannot properly uphold their responsibilities