The Field

Earning your master’s degree in Labor Studies at the UMass Labor Center puts you right at the center of the issues and debates around labor, work, and social justice. Labor is changing. As the attacks on labor have intensified, unions have been taking bold new directions. They have also combined efforts with a wide variety of alt-labor organizations, building strong connections with new social movements in broad-based coalitions for justice. Become one of our graduates who is at the forefront of many of these exciting developments to build justice and dignity in the workplace and the community, here and abroad.

We provide skills that activists need — hands-on skills in organizing, strategic corporate research, and bargaining — as well as the theory and analytical frameworks to think critically about issues facing working people and their movements today. Our curriculum provides an important grounding in the economic, political, and legal thinking as we interrogate issues around race, immigration, gender, and the working class in a global economy.