A school for workers
Local 974 welder lauds National Labor College – and pumps up his safety rep credentials
As tall as a professional basketball player and as studious as a college professor, Steve Mitchell insists he's just like everyone else.
And he is, but soon the 33-year seniority welder will have a piece of paper that proves how different he is in one important respect.
Once he gives the finishing touches to his final paper, the plantwide safety representative for 13,000 workers at the Caterpillar Area Facilities in Peoria, Ill., will become a graduate of the National Labor College (NLC) with a bachelor's degree in Labor Safety and Health.
"I never felt I needed the credibility of having a college degree," Mitchell said. "I thought, ‘Hey, I would just be the same guy doing the same job on behalf of the same workers.' "
Mitchell has been working on behalf of his fellow UAW Local 974 members as a health and safety representative or grievance handler since 1989. He was re-elected to his third term as plantwide safety rep this year. As a UAW Local Union Discussion Leader (LUDL) since 1997, he has done quite well without "that piece of paper" while training rank-and-file union members on hazardous materials and other workplace issues.
"In August 2004, though, I decided to register at the National Labor College. … I was beginning to feel I needed to learn more about health and safety so I could do a better job for the people I represent," he said.
Located on the grounds of the AFL-CIO's George Meany Center in Silver Spring, Md., just outside Washington, the NLC was the perfect place for a guy like Mitchell to earn a college degree. "The National Labor College is great at working with people who work for a living," Mitchell said.
For one thing, the NLC uses realistic standards when considering educational credits for incoming adult learners. Counting classroom time connected with his welding apprenticeship at Caterpillar, other community college courses and life experiences, Mitchell was halfway home toward a four-year degree the day he started the program. He even got one credit for an open-water SCUBA diving class he once took.
"Any UAW member who has taken our union's 40-hour hazardous materials course or some other UAW class can earn NLC credits simply by writing up a paper explaining what you learned from that training," Mitchell said.
No NLC course requires the union student to attend the Maryland campus for longer than one week per semester.
Some classes require only a weekend on-campus stay and independent study courses worked on from home.
Although campus visits were intensive and demanding, Mitchell looked forward to the 20-hour (yes, 20) days studying, debating and sharing experiences with machinists, electricians, railroad workers and other union activists.
"My classes at Illinois Central College were pretty good, too, but there's a world of difference between taking classes with union people and students half my age who don't have a whole lot of words written on the pages of their lives," he said.
"Going to the National Labor College is like going to the UAW Family Education Center at Black Lake in Michigan," Mitchell said of the Onaway facility. "You feel like you 're home. You are with people who understand you and know what you are about."
What adult union students are all about is studying to solve real-life problems and challenges, not to memorize abstract data in order to pass tests. Proof of the difference can be seen in Mitchell's senior project paper, titled, "What They Don't Know Might Kill Them: Why New Members Need to Know About Hazardous Materials and How This Information Might Save Their Lives."
His research on 38 new hires who are members of Local 974 revealed that "new workers at Caterpillar lack the ability to access vital hazardous materials information." His paper doesn't point fingers but seeks solutions.
"Research shows there are more effective methods of educating workers than a computer-based program such as the one Caterpillar used," he wrote. He argues in favor of the interactive, hands-on small group method he learned as a UAW health and safety LUDL.
Back at work still welding and fighting for members' health and safety, Mitchell is the same guy he always was. Only now, he's even better equipped at making sure his fellow workers make it to retirement healthy.
The UAW Health and Safety Department provides training in ergonomics and OSHA-required topics such as hazard communication, emergency response, lockout, confined space entry and fork lift. These and other topics help management meet its obligations at the worksite with no tuition charges.
Local unions should contact their regional offices for more information.
