History

CLCR was founded as the Midwest Center for Labor Research in 1982 by local union and community leaders, in reaction to the wave of plant closings and the devastating impact this had on workers and local communities. Our goal was to provide solid research and analysis to unions, communities, and local government in order to help understand the causes of the problems they faced and to find creative and effective solutions.

Between 1982 and 1996, CLCR published 24 issues of Labor Research Review, available online through Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. To a generation of trade union scholars and activists, Labor Research Review was a central forum for analysis, criticism, and strategic thinking on the American labor movement in the late 20th century.

In the early 1990s, CLCR was retained by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 738 and the Garfield Austin Interfaith Action Network to investigate layoffs at the E.J. Brach candy factory in Chicago's Austin neighborhood. Read all about it in CLCR's special report, "A Misadventure in Candy Land" (part 1 and part 2). The case illustrates CLCR's conclusion that the recent decline of manufacturing was far from inevitable, and that 80% of losses in manufacturing could have been averted - and the corresponding rise in poverty prevented.

In 2001, in partnership with the Chicago Federation of Labor, CLCR authored the study Creating a Manufacturing Career Path System in Cook County, which recognized the growing shift in American manufacturing to making high value-added products, the need for a highly educated and skilled workforce, and the failure of the publicly funded education system to provide such a workforce at all levels of the firm. In 2003, CLCR authored a follow-up study, The State of Illinois Manufacturing, advancing a plan for dramatic systemic reform in education.

Our in-depth research and proposals for reform served as a catalyst for new partnerships and programs for CLCR, including the Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council and Austin Polytechnical Academy. Our principal strength has been our strategic vision and our ability to prove, test, and refine these ideas in the context of particular partnerships and projects. CLCR is now in a position to substantially increase the scope and scale of its programs, projects, and influence in policy.