At its heart, the Worker Institute views its work as a contribution to reversing the growing inequality, now at historic levels, which undermines the economic and social sustainability of a vibrant democratic society.  The Institute provides the nation’s most comprehensive education, training, research, and organizational support for union leaders and worker advocates.  Worker Institute research fellows, sometimes in small teams, will have the opportunity to work directly with Ithaca-based faculty and ILR labor extension faculty based in NYC.

The fellowship program’s goal is to provide ILR students with a unique opportunity to contribute to important projects concerning workers and unions, expand their research skills, learn about potential career paths and interact with faculty, labor leaders and other fellows.

The main selection criteria include a strong academic record and a demonstrated interest in one of the Worker Institute’s research areas. 

Unions’ Role in Addressing Workplace Sexual Assault and Harassment and Structural Racism, Financialization and Home Care

The Worker Institute uses research to understand the root cause of problems in the world of work and design long-term solutions that advance collective representation and racial and gender equity. To do this, we apply community-engaged and participatory research methods to our research and evaluation of policies and programs. This reflects our commitment to ensuring that workers themselves are at the center of public discussions and decisions that directly affect them. The Worker Institute have two projects where we are seeking student support; one that falls under our Equity at Work program and another under our Future of Care Work. For our project entitled The Role of Unions in Addressing Workplace Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment, we are seeking help in drafting a literature review. This includes identifying the appropriate literature, summarizing key findings and turning the summaries into a narrative. We will also require support in developing and administering a survey to union members for this project. For our research entitled Structural Racism, Financialization and Home Care we will need support in coding qualitative interviews and summarizing key findings- with Anne Marie Brady