Labor Summer
General Information
Learn Organizing Skills
Applied Research
Union and CBO Program
FAQs
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June 16-August 8, 2008
The UC Berkeley Labor Center offers an exciting opportunity
for UC students to become summer interns with
cutting-edge unions and community-based organizations in Northern
California. The Labor Summer Internship Program is an
innovative PAID internship program for graduate and undergraduate
students, providing University of California students with the
opportunity to learn from and work with organizations working
for justice for California's working people.
Students spend eight weeks with labor unions and community-based
organizations, learning how to apply their skills in real world
settings in campaigns that are making a difference for working
people, especially immigrants and people of color.
Why apply to the Labor Summer internship?
Many working people in California earn wages that can't support
their families, never got or are losing their health care and
pensions, and face a host of other challenges.This internship
offers students the opportunity to hone their skills alongside
working people who are struggling for positive change. With
new energetic leadership and a rising commitment to organize
immigrants and workers in diverse industries, the labor movement
has reassumed its role as a leader in the struggle for social
justice. By working with labor and community organizations, students
can learn through service about the struggles of workers, immigrants,
women, and people of color.
Labor Summer interns in previous years have learned first hand
how:
• Grocery workers prepare for contract
negotiations and address the community impacts of Wal-Mart
big box stores (United Food and Commercial Workers),
• Migrant farm workers improve their
wages on California farms (United Farm Workers),
• Latino immigrants on construction sites enforce wage, hour, health & safety laws (Ironworkers Union and La Raza Centro Legal's Day Laborer Program),
• Young restaurant workers raise work standards in the San Francisco restaurant industry (Young Workers United),
• Low-wage Chinese immigrant workers better enforce and improve existing wage and hour laws (Chinese
Progressive Association),
• Low-wage childcare workers organize in Monterey and
San Benito Counties (SEIU 817).
Salary
Undergraduate interns will be paid at the rate of $12.50 per hour for an eight-week period for a gross amount of $4,000.00
Graduate interns will be paid the UC Graduate Research Step II rate of $2,912 per month pro-rated for an eight-week period for a gross amount of $5,269.27.
Should I do it?
Have you ever organized a meeting? Researched an issue? Volunteered in your community? Taught
a class? Do you have the courage to knock on a door and listen
to someone’s story? Can you imagine a better future for
the working poor? If your answer to any of these questions
is “yes” or if you want to learn how to do these
things, then Labor Summer is for you!
Looking for more information about the Labor Summer Internship
Program for organizing skills?
Looking for more information about the Labor Summer Internship
Program for student researchers?
Looking for more information about hosting a Labor Summer intern
at your union or community organization?
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Contact: Angelique Agloro
Phone: (510) 643-0910
Email:
“Every person that I have interacted with at my
intern work site and all the other interns have inspired me
and that has made me re-consider my future plans and has made
me branch out beyond what I am typically used to.”
-past undergraduate participant
“I may have learned more during this 8 week program than my entire two years of Graduate school. Before this internship, I underestimated the importance and strength of unions, and can only really appreciate how to a much greater extent the necessary role that unions play in preserving justice not only for working-class people in a free market economy such as ours.”
-past graduate participant
“When I entered the program, I only had a hazy idea of what a union even was. Now, I have a sense of what the labor movement is, what its goals are, how this fits into state and national politics, and innumerable other things. The program is excellent--I would recommend it to anyone interested in labor, social justice, and progressive politics, or just people.”
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