The Wellstone Labor Program helps build a strong and innovative labor movement through intensive and customized training of leaders, rank and file members, and staff of national, state, and local labor organizations. Using a customized curriculum, Wellstone Action partners with labor organizations across the country who are committed to organizing, developing new leaders and more effectively mobilizing their grassroots power to move a progressive pro-worker agenda.
Wellstone Action sees the next few years, following the historic election of Barack Obama, as critical building years for the progressive movement. That's why we partner with labor organizations and with community partners to build capacity, infrastructure, and develop permanent and skilled leaders and organizers-to win back political power and reassert a progressive workers agenda.
Wellstone Action works directly with unions to tailor each training to specific needs. We combine a customized curriculum with a general approach to organizing, based on Paul Wellstone's model of effective grassroots organizing. This model combines long-term grassroots organizing with effective political strategy, complemented by a detailed discussion of how power is built, exercised and contested, and the critical importance of a clear and relevant message as a basic organizing principle.
Our labor trainings take four broad directions depending on the needs of your union or labor organization:
Issue Advocacy
Electoral Training
Grassroots Organizing
Train-the-Trainer
Finally, our labor training work has a proven record of success. Since 2004, we've held over 150 labor trainings in 26 states and trained more than 7,500 union members in effective organizing skills.
To read more about our training offerings, click here.
To read testimonials from some of our many partners, click here.
Contact the Labor Program Director, Erik Peterson, at erik@wellstone.org.