ABSTRACT
American businesses have used vocational education and worker retraining as ways to remedy the job losses that result from their own downsizing and deindustrialization. The Business Roundtable, a representative organization of American companies, maintains that vocational training is the best way to interrupt the downward mobility of workers. Union members and academics are working together in the new labor movement because they believe the good of the country depends on it. One of the most important unions in the new labor movement is the Service Employers International Union (SEIU). The new unionism provides an unprecedented opportunity for a labor-vocational education collaboration. Vocational students must come to understand the connection between knowing and acting. In this action orientation, the critical vocational curriculum becomes an integral aspect of larger democratic social movements. The importance of unionism is highlighted by the exaggerated alienation and injustice workers experience in the post-Fordist globalized economy. Valley Care Cooperative provides a model for vocational education.
