Strategic Corporate Research

June 9-14, 2013

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Course description

ILRCB 4080 Strategic Corporate Research

Despite enormous challenges in organizing and bargaining in a rapidly changing global economy, this is a time of great opportunity for and innovation by U.S. unions and their allies. With a resurgence of action among working people, there has been a new level of inventiveness in campaigning, evident in recent union organizing and bargaining campaign victories such as:

• large, successful strikes by teachers in Chicago and by clerical members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the Long Beach/Los Angeles area—proving that when used strategically, the strike is still a powerful weapon for labor;
• the rising up of low-wage workers in rank-and-file community-based campaigns in companies and industries, such as Walmart and fast food, car wash workers, domestic workers, and taxi drivers—firms and workers many thought would be the last to organize;
• continued big wins among workers such as 3,000 security guards organized by SEIU 32BJ in Philadelphia and the first contract win for the nearly 60,000 airport security workers, members of AFGE; and
• ongoing efforts such as the heroic struggle of BCTGM workers at American Crystal Sugar in the Red River Valley in North Dakota—locked out since August 2011 and still fighting.

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 ten 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 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 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 online 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 readings several weeks before the class takes place to give them an opportunity to complete the readings 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 paper of twenty-five to thirty pages, 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 fifty percent of the grade for the course.