Labor Studies

“I committed to Manhattan College mid-way through my junior year of high school to come here and play soccer. I really liked the location and the small environment. I'm from a small town outside of Albany, so I didn't want to jump right into the city and not have a community like the one Manhattan offers. Also, the connections that we have in this city are unbelievably good compared to other schools.

“I came in as a communication major, and I decided that I wanted to double major. I did some research online and found labor studies. I want to work in human rights, so I found the subject material really interesting. I get to study laborers, their lives and experiences in the workforce, and how I can interact with people in the workforce. I'm also learning about the history of the workforce, and some issues in the workforce that are trying to be remedied right now.

“I really enjoy that the major is flexible and that I can choose my own classes across departments. I enjoy government, English, sociology — I was interested in a lot of things and I wasn't sure what direction I wanted to go in — and labor studies has allowed me to go in all of those directions at once. I’m also in a lot of classes with people who are different majors than myself, so it's interesting to approach whatever we’re learning with a different mindset than everyone else.

“I took a sociology class called Workers in the Workplace, and we went into Lower Manhattan to visit the Tenement Museum, the 9/11 Memorial, Union Square, which is actually a really big part of the labor movement, and Washington Square Park, which has a monument related to labor. It was really cool to be surrounded by some of the most important places in the labor movement in New York City — even in the whole country.

“I interned for Capitol Group, which is a lobbying firm in Albany. It’s a really small firm with just two lobbyists, so it was nice because I got to work with the people that had all the connections. I met several assemblymen and senators, and I got to talk to clients myself. I helped with their JCoPE filing (Joint Commission on Public Ethics), I was the editor for all of their memos of opposition and support for different bills that were going through legislation. I wrote legislative reports for clients at a time when the governor had just given his State of the State address, so I got to talk about a lot of things that are related to labor studies, such as the planned minimum wage increases. My boss was a Manhattan College graduate, so he let me do a lot of things that I was interested in.

“I was also paired with a mentor through Manhattan College’s Mentor Program — Jennifer Frankola ’02 — she's an education lawyer. She invited me to the city to watch her in the Court of Appeals. She was working on a liability case, and there were lots of people there, but she was nice enough to stay after and sort of explain what was happening in detail. And she introduced me to the judge of that case, and a few of the lawyers in her firm. She sort of gave me the idea that I should pursue something before I go to law school. She pursued education, and then went into education law. So maybe I could work for a union, and then decide I want to go to law school.

“It's really those connections you need to do anything after you graduate. In labor studies, you're going to get the one-on-one attention, you can cater your classes to be what you want, and your professors are really eager to connect you with people that they know.”