LERC celebrates 20 years at the University of Oregon


EUGENE, OR -- The Labor Education and Research Center (LERC) at the University of Oregon celebrates its 20th anniversary this month. It held a special celebration Oct. 3 in Eugene featuring Brian McWilliams of San Francisco, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and Dr. Elaine Bernard of Boston, director of the Harvard Trade Union Program, with introductions by UofO President Dave Frohnmayer.

The legislation creating the center to serve the educational and research needs of Oregon workers and their organizations, was successfully lobbied in 1977 by the Oregon AFL-CIO, the United Labor Lobby and the State Board of Higher Education. The seed for LERC's creation actually was planted in a resolution passed by delegates at the 1971 convention of the state labor federation.

Governor Bob Straub signed the bill on July 15, 1977, at a dinner in Springfield celebrating the 20th anniversary of the merger in Lane County of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

"This is one of the major pieces of legislation labor has gotten passed in years. It will have a long-lasting effect," said Pat Randall, then secretary-treasurer of the Oregon AFL-CIO, in a magazine article printed after the bill was signed.

The legislation appropriated $247,278 to finance LERC during the 1977-79 biennium. But recognition and demand were so great that the Legislature granted LERC a boost that nearly doubled its budget in 1979.

LERC was the first publicly-supported program of its type established in the Pacific Northwest. At the time, it joined some 40 other labor education centers throughout the nation, the first of which was established at the University of Wisconsin in 1924.

It initially offered leadership training, education programs and related activities to working men and women, and its staff did research in areas of concern to Oregon's labor movement. "When fully operational, the center will provide courses and services to union organizations and working people in all areas of the state on an extension service basis," reported the Labor Press in July 1977.

According to the Labor Press report, Governor Straub planned to give the pen to Thomas Scanlon of Salem, retired research and education director of the Oregon AFL-CIO, and one of the early advocates of such a center. Delegates to the 1976 AFL-CIO convention unanimously proposed that the facility be named for Scanlon, long active in educational circles, who served on numerous committees, boards and commissions in that field, including the Oregon State Board of Education. Scanlon died last year.

Walter Davis of Washington, D.C., then director of education for the national AFL-CIO, attended the signing and praised the new learning center, but he expressed concern for the start-up center. "I am leery of economics classes taught by a pro-business economics professor or a retired management personnel director." He also emphasized that the advisory committee "keep an eye on the money" so that the center's funds are spent on projects consistent with the needs of the labor movement.

Dr. William Boyd, then president of the University of Oregon, hailed the legislation saying, "We intend to work very hard in cooperation with labor representatives to make this program one of which both labor and the university can be proud."

Boyd pledged to the Lane County Labor Council's 20th anniversary dinner audience to make the center a link that will bind the university and trade union movement together so that the university at Eugene will be regarded as "a friend of organized labor."

Then State Senator Ed Fadeley of Lane County praised another legislator from that county, State Representative Ted Kulongoski, for his role in getting LERC started. It was Kulongoski who introduced the first bill to create the center in the 1975 session. That measure failed to make it to final passage but laid the foundation for success in 1977.

Fadeley and Kulongoski are now Oregon Supreme Court justices.

Secretary-Treasurer Randall was singled out as the key lobbyist for labor in the push to success in 1977. He, in turn, lauded Irv Fletcher, then secretary-treasurer of the Lane County Labor Council, as one who "played a big role in lobbying for the labor education center."

Fletcher is now president of the Oregon AFL-CIO. Randall retired in 1981.

The first organizations represented on LERC's advisory committee were the Oregon AFL-CIO, Lane County Labor Council, Multnomah County Labor Council, Woodworkers Region 3, Oregon Machinists Council, Western Council of Lumber, Production and Industrial Workers, Communications Workers, Retail Clerks District 45, Oregon Federation of Teachers, Teamsters Joint Council 37, Longshoremen's Columbia River District, Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers, Oregon State Employees Association, Oregon Education Association and the national AFL-CIO's Department of Education.

Their first goal was a national recruiting drive to find a director to fill the $31,000 a year post.

Steven Deutsch, a professor of sociology at the U of O and a longtime member of the American Federation of Teachers, was the interim director of LERC. He is still on the university's faculty.

Dr. Emory Via arrived as the first permanent director. Via was a labor education veteran, one of the few whites to successfully build bridges with black workers in the South as part of the Southern Council of the AFL-CIO. He retired in 1988.

"When I arrived in 1978, I found a program that had lively support within the university and from an actively involved labor advisory committee," Via said. "We were already offering courses throughout the state on stewards' training, contract negotiations, and contract administration. We reached all sectors, manufacturing, service industries, building and construction and public employment and held classes in virtually every region for unions large and small." Dr. Margaret Hallock, an Oregon state economist and former director of research of the Oregon Public Employees Union, succeeded Via as director in 1988.

It was also in 1988 that the University of Oregon's Portland Center opened. With the help of Senator Grattan Kerans, the Legislature approved a new LERC faculty position for Portland. Bill Fritz, a longtime union activist, was the first coordinator of the Portland Center. He was succeeded in 1994 by Dr. Barbara Byrd, former director of the Labor Studies Program at San Francisco Community College.

Two faculty members to join LERC in its early years were Associate Professors Marcus Widenor and Steve Hecker. Widenor is a labor historian and former union organizer in Southern textile mills and Hecker, an industrial hygienist, is the resident safety and health expert. Both men are on LERC's faculty today.

They are joined on staff by Lynn Feekin, an organizer and community economic development expert; Dr. Gordon Lafer, a researcher and expert in labor research and policy; Nancy Arbogast, an adjunct instructor; Marian Koch, an instructor, and Willette Gibbons, a research assistant.

Over the years other educators and researchers have joined the faculty for special projects, including Lee Schore of the Center for Working Life; Charles Spencer, a former cabinet maker and labor activist turned graduate student, and Kurt Willcox, a staff representative from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Jim Gallagher is an associate professor emeritus, and Leila Wrathall, Scott Tobey, Jill Kriesky, Debbie Green and Dick Ginnold are all former faculty members.

For 20 years LERC and the university have constantly adjusted its topics and formats to fit the times.

Many of LERC's programs have received national recognition and over the years it has been able to secure hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants for safety and health training research. But starting in the '90s, some of its base support started to erode. Administrators Boyd, Paul Olum and Richard Hill, who had helped establish LERC, were gone. And Measure 5, the property tax limitation initiative shrunk LERC's share of the higher education budget even further.

A reassessment moved LERC to substantially broaden its research and programming, and with a new emphasis on strategic approaches to workplace changes, labor-management relations and union operations, it kicked off seven years of growth.

Some of the institutes and conferences LERC has had or still has a hand in include the AFL-CIO Summer School, Public Employment Relations Conference, Summer Institute for Union Women, Pacific Northwest Labor History Association, the Morse Chair of Law & Politics, and Partners in Construction Cooperation, a labor-management program in the construction industry.

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Oct. 3, 1997 issue

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