ABSTRACT
Universities almost everywhere are cutting back on staff and resources or, in some instances, eliminating once vibrant labor centers that provided indispensable instructional programs and research to workers and their unions. Labor education is a tradition as old as the labor movement itself. Rankand- file unionists could take extension or continuing education courses in labor history, collective bargaining, and other related subjects and earn a certificate that might help them obtain fulltime organizing or business agent jobs, either with unions or, in some cases, human resources departments. The demise and transfiguration of worker education are symptoms of the retreat of organized labor on almost every front. The puzzle of the current era is that neither the service nor the business union models have been able to slow, let alone reverse, the decline of organized labor, both in membership and in social power.
