the local immigrant rights movement, at a time when most unions struggle just to survive. While union density nationally has sunk to around 11 percent, 15 percent of the workforce, or about 1.1 million workers, are union members in the Los Angeles-Long Beach metropolitan area. The UCLA Labor Center functions as a sort of policy and research think tank for the network of community nonprofits, legal advocacy groups, and strong unions that make up the city’s vibrant left. With collective bargaining effectively out of reach for many, institutions such as the UCLA labor center have been laboratories for discovering new ways to represent the American working class.

Beyond Los Angeles, however, similar university programs are enduring closures, downsizing, and legal challenges to their legitimacy as publicly funded institutions. AsAmerican labor searches for a viable strategy to endure and grow, its limited footholds in many state institutions of higher learning are coming loose.

“The work relationship has two sides,” explains Sarah Laslett, a professor who works at the labor center at the University of Oregon, “and the owner side of the employment relationship is much better resourced in higher education.” Schools like Laslett’s go by a variety of names—worker schools or labor centers are common—and they are predominantly housed in state universities and community colleges. Many were founded at the height of organized labor’s political power in the 1960s, as adjuncts to industrial relations institutes created just after the Second World War.

Where these schools persist, classes are typically short—a week or two—and teach skills in high demand in