ILR Hosts 2025 UALE Northeast Summer School for Women+ in Unions and Worker Organizations

This summer, the reach of labor education in Ithaca expanded as more than 150 workers united as a network of leaders grounded in history and ready to drive meaningful change in their own communities. 

From July 7-11, Cornell’s North Campus was the home base for the United Association for Labor Education (UALE)’s Northeast Summer School for Women and Gender-Expansive Leaders in Unions and Worker Organizations. The 48th summer school — hosted by Cornell ILR’s Worker Institute and Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution — was built around the theme of “Love & Resistance: Building a New World.”

UALE’s four regional summer schools have deep Cornell ILR roots: the late ILR Professors Barbara Wertheimer and Lois Gray were the founding mothers. Wertheimer’s research on women in unions, including her groundbreaking book “We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America,” inspired her to reach out to Gray, who was then president of the College Labor Educator Association (now UALE), about starting a summer school. Since 1975, these schools have represented their commitment to wide access to labor education.

The week brought participants from over a dozen states, varied industries, and many backgrounds together to develop leadership skills and collective capacity for advancing worker justice, through featured workshops, plenary sessions, and opportunities to learn directly from one another — including across language differences with events occurring in English and Spanish. Guided by a dedicated group of volunteer instructors and facilitators, these workshops included topics like, “Conflict Resolution for Organizers,” “Public Speaking for Impact,” and “Labor, Immigration, and the Economy.” In addition to concrete skills and strategies, sessions also explored the history of women in the labor movement, grounding today’s challenges in a rich legacy of leadership. 

"The Summer School builds the power we need for the labor movement to meet this moment,” said school co-convener Arianna Schindle, WI director of training and curriculum development. “As attacks on workers’ rights escalate, women+ activists are coming together with the skills and strategies to defend democracy and grow a movement that works for all. Many are connecting across sectors for the first time — grounding their work in the often-overlooked histories of women+, immigrants, and other marginalized leaders, and lifting up the heroes who paved the way." 

For the ILR hosts, it was important to spotlight Ithaca’s own labor landscape by inviting and uplifting local labor leaders. For example, Christine Charles, UAW Local 2300 second vice president and former president, welcomed participants with her opening remarks. A graduate of the 2015 Summer School (also hosted in Ithaca), Charles spoke about the importance of continuing to build bridges between campus workers and the broader labor community, underscoring both the power of solidarity and the impact of leadership development across generations.

This was clear to her from her own Summer School experience, with the relationships she built as her greatest takeaway: “I felt very much closer to my union, to my co-workers,” she said. The two women she attended with were of great support to her when she later became president, and were “instrumental” to UAW Local 2300’s strike at Cornell in 2024 — almost a decade later. “Our local is functioning so much better because of that,” she continued.

Highlighting how special it felt to attend Summer School at Cornell, where she’s worked for nearly 20 years, Charles said “it was a great honor” to come back and speak this year.

Outside the classrooms, other programs explored the core themes of love and resistance as inspiration and purpose for participants’ work. For one, Labor History Night reckoned with the important role women have played in the labor movement, with performances of the stories of legendary labor leaders to honor the movement’s past and to inspire its future. A core tradition of Summer School, the multimedia program allowed participants to feel an even stronger part of this history. 

For attendee Aris Giles, UAW Local 2300 trustee and a zone representative for Cornell Dining, though, her participation in Labor History Night was heavily influenced by her public speaking classes.

“It was after I did my [first] speech, and my teacher said I was great, so I said, ‘Why not put the tools to the test and get some practice?’” Giles said about her decision after she was “volun-told” to sign up. “[In the class,] they helped you build your confidence and taught you how to use the tools, since practice makes progress for public speaking.”

Giles portrayed Ai-Jen Poo, the executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. “To be up there and say her words in first person, it felt as if it was me,” she said, “and to say it just made me very powerful and part of something more than me and even UAW.”

At Culture & Identity Night, participants shared pieces of their heritage through music, spoken word, and dance in multiple languages — and invited others to join, connecting across their experiences. Hosts emphasized the need for this kind of community that celebrates differences and relishes in the opportunities to work together toward common struggles and dreams. 

“It was a privilege to actually get a chance to see how many different kinds of women+ were represented,” said attendee Shelby Buche about the evening.

Buche, who lives in Ithaca and serves as UAW Local 2300 trustee, also shared about the humility and gratitude that came from interacting with the other participants, especially those who have very different union contexts compared to theirs at the Tompkins County Public Library. 

“This is my first job in a union role, this is my first time I’m negotiating, and I’m very grateful for the confidence boost of being at Summer School,” Buche said. “The biggest thing for me actually was being in a space where everyone in the room recognized the skills that it took to be union representation,” they explained.

Like Charles, Buche also commented on the relationships they deepened, including with people they see and work with regularly: “Getting a chance to connect with my own community members in this context was so special. I’m glad I grew closer to my fellow Ithaca union members and that I understand them in ways that will help our further organizing going forward,” they said. 

These lasting relationships — and the stronger sense of solidarity and shared purpose that come with them — were a core goal of the week.

“Working for ILR and living in Ithaca have made me really consider how I interact with and invest in my communities, and that was at the forefront of my mind,” said school co-convener Liz Davis-Frost ’20 MPA ’22, SI mediation and training extension associate.

The week ended with another tradition: a local labor action. The school hosted representatives from five Ithaca unions, who joined small group dialogues with participants to talk about their work and the current moment. The local union leaders highlighted the solidarity work happening in Ithaca and what they’d learned from it.

“It felt like a responsibility to ensure a strong presence of both the past and present local movements and be a steward of that connection,” Davis-Frost said. “I was so glad so many members of our community were able to be here to teach and learn with our participants.”

These kinds of conversations and new relationships gave participants a renewed belief in the power of collective action to bring back to their unions and organizations alongside new skills — and the success of this year’s summer school reflects the strength of the ILR community and its commitment to a legacy of expanding labor education even more broadly.

Special thanks to Julie Flores for beautifully documenting the week through her photography.