University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center (LERC) has hired a new instructor: Sarah Laslett. LERC is a university extension program that provides training and research assistance to unions.
Laslett most recently directed a similar program, the Washington State Labor Education and Research Center. She began there in 2007, and became the center’s director in 2010 when it moved from The Evergreen State College to South Seattle College. There she taught college students about workplace rights, produced the third edition of the Washington State Workers’ Rights Manual, and built a shop steward training program. She specialized in training women and young workers.
Prior to Washington LERC, Laslett directed the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at the University of Washington. In the mid-1990s, as a graduate student in American Studies, she helped lead the effort to form a union of over 4,000 graduate student employees at the University of Minnesota. She later worked for Communications Workers of America in San Francisco and Service Employees International Union in Seattle.
