Bill Barry with "Mother Jones"--2004      

Bill Barry
Director of Labor Studies (Retired)
4204 Elsrode Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21214
(410) 426-3966
bbarry@ccbcmd.edu

            Bill Barry was been the Director of Labor Studies for CCBC from 1997-2012, and maintained a program started in the 1970s by the Reverend Everett L. Miller, Sr. to help put the “move” back into the labor movement. The program offers an Associate Degree in Labor Studies, and is one of the very few in the United States which has not either become a research facility or been swallowed up into an “industrial relations” program.
           The program offers all of the basic union training courses, trying to answer the basic question: “How are workers trying to make their lives better?”
  The programs stresses worker self-reliance, and has a motto “Teaching Workers to Teach Themselves.”
Classes can be taught throughout the middle-Atlantic states, and on-line, using streaming video.
            Credit classes include

Grievance and Arbitration—how workers can enforce their union contracts

• Collective Bargaining—how to negotiate a new contract. Separate sections of this course are offered for private sector and public sector workers
• Lobbying and Political Action—how workers create political movements
• Organizing—developing a program to bring new workers into a union
• Labor Law I—The National Labor Relations Act, and the policies and procedures of The National Labor Relations Board
• Labor Law II—all other employment law, from discrimination to bankruptcy
• Labor History I—from colonial times to 1905, with the development of the union movement
• Labor History II—1905—tomorrow, covering “modern” unionism and all of its problems
• Labor in the Movies—the only course of its kind in the country, with a different feature movie every week about workers

              There are also a series of Continuing Education workshops offered by the program, including Public Speaking for Union Leaders, Workers Compensation, Great Officers Training, and New Technology for Union Officers.
              Barry became a union member in January, 1968 when he began an apprenticeship with Carpenters Local 1907 in Worcester, MA. After a work-related injury in 1972, he became a volunteer organizer, and later a fulltime staff person for Service Employees Local 495 in Worcester, where he organized public and private sector workers, negotiated contracts, and supported political activity.
              From 1974-1983, Barry was a Field Organizer for The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), with “permanent” assignments in New Bedford, MA, Los Angeles, CA, Charlotte and Winston-Salem, NC, Greenville, SC, Waynesboro, VA, Philadelphia, PA, and Wilkes-Barre, PA. He was involved in many organizing campaigns in other areas and contract negotiations in these areas and made thousands of home visits.
              From 1983-1988, he was The Administrative Officer for The Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia, where he was a principal officer during the 46-day strike in 1985 against Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc.
              From 1989-1992, he was a Regional Organizing Director for The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers (now UNITE) working out of regional offices in St Louis, MO, Pottsville, PA and Baltimore. He specialized in internal organizing in the open shop states and in non-traditional organizing and targeting.
  He is developing a history of the steelworkers at Sparrows Point, and the project can be pulled up on-line at www.sparrowspointsteelworkers.com. He is a regular guest speaker at high schools and community groups in the Baltimore area, and has made a series of appearances on The Marc Steiner Show, whose tapes are available on his site.
  Barry is the author of two books directed at building the union movement. In 2008, he published I Just Got Elected—Now What? A New Union Officer’s Handbook and in 2009, he published Union Strategies for Hard Times: Helping Your Members and Building Your Union in the Great Recession and his newest book, From First Contact to First Contract: A Union Organizer’s Handbook.
              He has written for labor magazines and his op-ed article for The Baltimore Sun on Labor Day, 2005, has been widely reprinted and his Labor Day editorial runs annually on WYPR-FM. His articles from The Steward Update are also available on this site, as are a series of reviews for The Labor Studies Journal. He also contributed long articles to The Worldwide Encyclopedia of Labor History and to The Encyclopedia of Class.

  In 2003, 2007 and 2011, he was a City Council candidate in the 3rd District of Baltimore City for the Green Party, taking 27% of the vote in 2007, the highest vote a non-Democratic gained since 1939. He is a member of USLAW (U.S. Labor Against the War) and of Healthcare Now—of Maryland, which supports a single-payer health policy for the US.

       The program also sponsores a wide range of outside speakers and activities. Guest speakers have included:
  Tony Buba, who produced the video Struggles in Steel  
  Bill Lucy, the secretary-treasurer of AFSCME, who discussed his participation in the Memphis sanitation workers strike of 1968
  John O'Connor, who is creating worker owned clothing co-ops
  Anne Feeney, the famous labor singer
  Mark Reutter, the historian of Sparrows Point
  Cory Dolgon, the labor singer
  Kenneth Durr, author of Behind the Backlash , about working-class Baltimore
  Joe McCartin and Kenneth Moffett about the PATCO strike
  David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, producers of Mardi Gras: Made in China
  Todd Cherkis and members of The United Workers Association
  Kirk Smith, Organizing Director of the United Association
  T.J. Marsalo, of The Organizing Institute
  Joe Uehlein, from the Ravenswood strike
  George DuBoise, author of Cross-Class Alliances:   
  Lawrence Guyot, chairman of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
  Tom Ward. Founder of the Irish Railroad Workers Shrine
  Stephen Brighton, developer of the history project for Irish quarry workers in Texas, MD
  Louis Diggs, author of the histories of African-American communities in Baltimore county
  Elmer Hall, author of several books about Sparrows Point
  Deborah Rudacille, author of Roots of Steel, about Sparrows Point
  • Antero Pietila, author of Not in My Neighborhood
  • Erik Forman and Ted Dewberry, of the IWW, on organizing Jimmy Johns workers
  • Ernie Imhoff, on the restoration of the USS John Brown