The 2026 Strategic Corporate Research Summer School, co-sponsored by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and the AFL-CIO, is an all-day, weeklong intensive course for union staff and others who work or want to work in social change and corporate accountability organizations, including primarily labor unions but also workers’ centers, environmental justice groups, and community-based organizations. It prepares students to engage corporations by teaching them, through hands-on techniques, how to research corporate ownership, finance, organization, and power.
The program targets those who want to learn about and contribute to the innovation taking place in union organizing and bargaining. For example, some recent successful campaigns have been multinational and multi-union. Other campaigns have drawn heavily on rank-and-file community-based action. A growing number of campaigns have targeted occupations and industries that either fall outside the NLRB model or are specifically denied legal employee status. Recent campaign victories include:
- In 2024, unions won historic bargaining and strike victories in the hospitality industry. Over 10,000 hotel workers, organized with UNITE-HERE, went on a series of rolling strikes at 25 hotels in nine cities. In Nevada, 700 hospitality workers, organized with the Culinary Workers Union, went on strike for 69 days and won a contract that was ratified unanimously by the membership. Organizers at each union used a combination of rank-and-file community action and engagement, innovative strategies such as practice picketing, intermittent or rolling strikes, industry- and company-wide bargaining, and strategically targeting the most profitable segments of the company.
- As the print and digital news’ industry continues to go through major restructuring and employment changes, 3,200 media workers organized with The News Guild (TNG/CWA) or Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) in the last 15 years. WGAE’s new units include Vice Media, Slate, Salon, Huffington Post, The Intercept, Gizmodo Media Group, and ThinkProgress; while TNG’s include New York Magazine, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, The Daily Hampshire Gazette, Mashable, PC Mag, Geek, and Ask Men.
These victories came about through a combination of grassroots rank-and-file mobilizing, rank-and-file leadership development, and escalating actions in the workplace and broader community. However, fundamental to all these campaigns was careful strategic research.
This course teaches participants how to research corporate structure and power and develop union campaign strategies. To do that, the course provides hands-on research training, teaching students how to investigate corporate ownership, finance, organization, and power. Students learn how to analyze the key relationships, profit centers, growth strategies, and key decision makers that drive a particular corporation and shape its labor relations strategy. They also learn how unions can best respond to and capitalize on these characteristics through comprehensive organizing and bargaining campaigns.