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Directory of Labor History Organizations
This directory is a growing list of organizations that are connected to labor history. Several of these organizations have conferences that may be of interest to labor archivists.
The American Labor Studies Center is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization whose mission is to collect, analyze, evaluate, create and disseminate labor history and labor studies curricula and related materials, aligned to the various state and national standards, to kindergarten through 12th grade teachers nationwide. They will include such areas as the history, organization, activities, and issues affecting the labor movement and the political, economic, and cultural aspects of workers and their unions. It is governed by a Board of Directors and funded by contributions and government grants.
The Global Labour History Network
The Global Labour History Network is an interdisciplinary network of historians and other social scientists, founded in Barcelona on June 16, 2015. It unites local, national and regional scholarly associations, journals, archives and museums as well as committed individuals, who aspire to further study of work and workers in the broadest sense.
Research topics include: paid and unpaid work, free and unfree, productive and reproductive labour, in all areas of the globe and without temporal limitations.
The GLHN promotes research, the collection of data, the sharing and mobilization of knowledge, and the preservation of archives and other historical materials. The network encourages the formation of collaborative transcontinental working groups and envisages the organization of global conferences.
Greater New Haven Labor History Association
The mission of the Greater New Haven Labor History Association is to collect, preserve, and share the history of working people in the Greater New Haven Area. Their Mission is to educate about the history, culture and traditions of working people and their unions, celebrate individuals and organizations that have improved the quality of life in our community, and organize events to honor the struggles and victories of working people and their unions.
Harry Bridge Center for Labor Studies, University of Washington
The Harry Bridges Endowed Chair and Center for Labor Studies were created to be jointly housed in the departments of Political Science and History at the University of Washington. Supporting research, teaching, and community outreach, The Center focuses on labor’s contribution to society. The Center promotes the study of labor in all of its facets – locally, nationally, and worldwide. Our mission is to develop labor studies, broadly conceived to include working men and women everywhere, as a central concern in higher education. The Center co-founded and continues to participate in the advisory board of the Labor Archives of Washington, part of the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections.
Illinois Labor History Society
The Illinois Labor History Society (ILHS) was formed on August 5, 1969 in the office of the late Joseph M. Jacobs, attorney for the Chicago Teachers Union, Meatcutters, and other labor organizations. Over the years, the ILHS has advocated for the protection of important Illinois labor history sites, published guidebooks by the later Professor William Adelman, and provided labor history programs and tours for thousands of union members, students, teachers, and members of the general public.
The International Association of Labour History Institutions (IALHI)
The International Association of Labour History Institutions (IALHI) brings together archives, libraries, documentation centres, museums and research institutions specializing in the history and theory of the labour and social movements from all over the world. IALHI's main goal is to facilitate the exchange of expertise in order to preserve, and promote the access to, and the use of, their respective collections.
The International Association of Labour History Institutions (IALHI) aims to connect member institutions and to facilitate the exchange of expertise in order to preserve, and promote the access to, and the use of, their respective collections.
IALHI, founded in 1970, brings together archives, libraries, documentation centres, museums and research institutions specializing in the history and theory of labour and social movements from all over the world.
The International Labour Organization (ILO)
The International Labour Organization (ILO) is devoted to promoting social justice and internationally recognized human and labour rights, pursuing its founding mission that social justice is essential to universal and lasting peace.
The only tripartite U.N. agency, since 1919 the ILO brings together governments, employers and workers of 187 Member States, to set labour standards, develop policies and devise programmes promoting decent work for all women and men.
The Conference sets the international labour standards and the broad policies of the ILO. It meets annually in Geneva. Often called an international parliament of labour, the Conference is also a forum for discussion of key social and labour questions.
Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA)
LAWCHA is an organization of scholars, teachers, students, labor educators, and activists who seek to promote public and scholarly awareness of labor and working-class history through research, writing, and organizing.
They hold a biennial conference in odd years and regular meetings at the Organization of American Historians (OAH) conference in even years. We also sponsor sessions at the OAH, the American Historical Association conference, the Southern Historical Association’s conference, Business History, and other conferences around the country.
The Labor Heritage Foundation works to preserve and promote knowledge of the cultural heritage of the American worker through the arts, including music, poetry, written works, theatre, and artistic works; and conducts historical research through written and oral histories. Their mission is to strengthen the labor movement through the use of music and arts.
LHF maintains a network of activists, artists, and leaders, who perform, speak on relevant issues, provide trainings, and/or produce materials useful for the promotion of the history, culture, and importance of the American Labor movement and its current progressive activities and historical accomplishments.
Labor Notes is a media and organizing project that has been the voice of union activists who want to put the movement back in the labor movement since 1979.
Through our magazine, website, books, conferences, and workshops, we promote organizing, aggressive strategies to fight concessions, alliances with worker centers, and unions that are run by their members.
Every two years Labor Notes holds a national conference that attracts thousands of activists, about a tenth of them from other countries. Besides workshops on every conceivable skill and issue, there’s space for meetings of people from the same union and people with the same interests.
Labor Notes is also a network of rank-and-file members, local union leaders, and labor activists who know the labor movement is worth fighting for. We encourage connections between workers in different unions, worker centers, communities, industries, and countries to strengthen the movement—from the bottom up.
Working people are raising their voices more and more each day, demanding better treatment from their workplaces and their elected officials.
While labor columnists at daily newspapers have become a dying breed and union news has largely been sidelined within traditional print and televisual media, affordable and easy-to-use recording and editing technologies now allow workers, union members, leaders and activists to create their own alternative means of communication. These days, that often takes the form of either podcasts or radio shows (which often are also available via podcast).
Labor Research Action Network (LRAN)
The Labor Research and Action Network (LRAN) is a dynamic collaborative effort to connect workers’ rights organizations, academics and students to build workplace and economic power for working people in this country.
New York Labor History Association (NYLHA)
The New York Labor History Association (NYLHA) was founded in 1976 by trade unionists, academics, students, archivists, educators, labor editors, attorneys, and retirees, mostly from New York State. NYLHA encourages the study of workers and their organizations and serves as a bridge between past and present labor unionists and academics.
North American Labor History Conference (NALHC)
The North American Labor History Conference is a nationally-recognized conference exploring the past, present, and future of the labor movement in the Americas. Established in 1979 by Philip P. Mason, the founder and first director of the Walter P. Reuther Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, it grew from a small regional conference to the major labor conference in the country. The NALHC showcased an entire generation of labor scholars with cutting-edge research and gave budding graduate students their start not to mention serving as the launching pad for the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA).
Having run continuously from 1979 as an annual conference, we began a biennial schedule in 2018 in recognition of everyone's tightening travel budgets. But the pandemic pause has been overlong, and we are very much looking forward to a return to normal.
Pacific Northwest Labor History Association
The Pacific Northwest Labor History Association (PNLHA) is a non-profit association dedicated to preserving the history and heritage of workers in the Pacific Northwest. We consider the “Pacific Northwest” to be British Columbia, Oregon and Washington. Our members are trade unionists, students, academics, and others who share an interest in the history and heritage of workers in this region.
Social and Labour History News
Search collections on social history and the history of the labour movement from the late 18th to the beginning of the 21st century. More than 2.5 million records including 900,000 digitised objects (archives, books, brochures, leaflets, photographs, posters, prints, cartoons, sound, films and videos) from 23 specialized archives and libraries.
Southern Labor Studies Association (SLSA)
The idea of an organization designed to promote southern labor history goes back to 1966, when a group of Southern Historical Association (SHA) members who had been meeting annually decided to form their own organization called the Association of Southern Labor Historians (ASLH). By 1972 the ASLH had largely disbanded, but Merl E. Reed and Gary M. Fink, of Georgia State University, initiated a biennial conference to continue its past efforts. The Southern Labor History Conference—later named the Southern Labor Studies Conference—first met in Atlanta in the spring of 1976 and sponsored sessions with historians, activists, and labor leaders. Since then, labor activists and academics have met to exchange scholarship and experiences at the biennial Southern Labor Studies Conference.
In May 2007 at the joint conference convened at Duke University by the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA) and the Southern Labor Studies Conference, participants specializing in southern labor created the Southern Labor Studies Association to put the conference on a more secure footing. Professor Heather Thompson was elected as SLSA’s first president. Since then the association has expanded to promote the study, teaching, and preservation of the history of southern labor through a variety of activities.
United Association for Labor Education (UALE)
The United Association for Labor Education is an organization of labor educators which promises progress, growth, and hope for the labor movement. Born of the merger between Workers’ Education Local 189 and the University and College Labor Education Association, the UALE welcomes all labor educators into this new, exciting national and international organization. Together we will work to promote education as an essential tool in the process of union transformation, to develop new leadership, and to strengthen the field of labor education in order to meet the ever-changing needs of unions and workers.
Wisconsin Labor History Society
Formed in 1981, the Wisconsin Labor History Society exists to continue the heritage developed by the state’s workers and union activists. We are dedicated to: telling the public of the contributions of labor to Wisconsin; getting labor’s story in the schools and colleges; and preserving documents and records of workers and their unions.
Working-Class Studies Association
The WCSA is a non-profit organization with 501(c)(3) status and a board elected by our members. Members publish the open access, peer-reviewed Journal of Working-Class Studies twice a year, edit and contribute to the multi-authored blog Working-Class Perspectives and collaborate to produce work such as the Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies.