The following information pertains to the last time this program was offered. If you would like to be notified via e-mail when new information about this program is available, subscribe to the Summer Session and Special Programs e-mail list.
Strategic Corporate Research
Course description
Despite enormous challenges in organizing and bargaining in a rapidly changing global economy, this is a time of great opportunity and innovation by American unions. Nowhere is this more evident than in recent union organizing and bargaining campaign victories such as CWA in wireless telecommunications, USW at ASARCO, AFSCME and UAW in Michigan family child care, SEIU in property services and UNITE HERE at major hotels across the country. These victories came about because of a combination of grassroots rank-and-file mobilizing and leadership development, and escalating actions in the workplace and broader community, but fundamental to all these campaigns was careful strategic research.
Unfortunately the U.S. labor movement today is facing a critical shortage of trained organizing, bargaining and campaign staff with strategic research training who understand both corporate structure and finance and union campaign strategies. To help meet this need the AFL-CIO asked the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations seven years ago to develop a one-week intensive credit course on strategic corporate research for graduate students and upper level undergraduates interested in working with the labor movement upon completion of their degrees. The course will be available as either a non-credit course or as a 1.5 credit hour undergraduate course with an additional research and writing assignment. Those interested in pursuing strategic corporate research positions within unions are strongly advised to take the course for credit so that they will have the additional experience of researching an actual corporation, and have a completed strategic research report to show prospective union employers.
This course will be designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to the nature and structure of corporate ownership, finance, and power in today's economy. Through lectures, readings, case studies, and research training and exercises the class will provide students with the tools to pose and answer basic questions on the operations, structure, and industrial relations strategies of corporate America. In particular this course will focus on how these company characteristics, structures, and practices impact on the firm's labor relations policies and strategies and how unions can best respond to and capitalize on these characteristics in union strategic organizing and bargaining campaigns.
The course will also provide in-depth hands-on training in the on-line and library research tools required to conduct strategic corporate research. As part of this course students will work through a series of case studies dealing with diverse firms and industries, as well as have an opportunity to conduct in-depth research on an actual firm in the context of union organizing or bargaining.
Because of the limited time available while students are here on campus they will be sent books and a course pack several weeks before the class takes place to give them an opportunity to complete a significant amount of the reading before they arrive. In addition to reading assignments, there will be short written exercises and class presentations to be completed while the class is in session. Students taking the course for credit will be required to conduct independent research and write a 25-30 page paper summarizing comprehensive corporate research and analysis for a designated company. The final paper will be due six weeks after the class and will count for 50 percent of the grade for the course.