School for Workers
Liz Camacho
Administrative Manager
Liz Camacho provides program and administrative support for School for Workers. She helps the department with the preparation and delivery of programs, conferences, workshops, and seminars. With over 10 years of administrative, customer service, and program support experience, Liz provides effective, efficient, and client-friendly operations for School for Workers. In addition, Liz is bilingual (Spanish and English) and can assist anyone that may need that accommodation. Si necesita ayuda o prefiere comunicarse en el español, estoy disponible en ayudarle.
Michael Childers
Professor
Michael Childers (PhD) brings diverse management and engineering experience from a wide variety of industries including basic steel, machining, metal fabrication, and plastics manufacturing. In addition to steward, bargaining, financial officer, and leadership courses, Michael's teaching interests include industrial engineering topics such as time study, production standards, lean production, job evaluation, and incentive & gainsharing pay systems. He also has expertise in program evaluation, and assists unions to be more effective in utilizing technology, including teaching computer skills and internet research.
Armando Ibarra
Professor
Armando Ibarra (PhD) joined the School for Workers faculty in January 2011. Dr. Ibarra has extensive and diverse teaching, research and organizing experience. His research and fields of specialization are Chicano/a Latino/a working communities, adult education on issues of diversity in the workplace, international labor migration, leadership development, organizing workplaces, and applied research.
Alexia Kulwiec
Associate Professor
Alexia Kulwiec (JD) previously worked as Chief Counsel to the SEIU Local 1 in Chicago, Illinois, and Associate General Counsel at the IUOE Local 150 before joining the School for Workers in 2014. She brings this experience to her work analyzing and contributing to national labor policy through her publications and brief writing as well as to the classroom. She also currently studies labor standards in U.S. agriculture and the food system. While always willing to tailor courses for local unions or other advocacy groups, Alexia currently offers programs in labor and employment law, wage and hour claims, union organizing campaigns, contract negotiations and interpretation, grievance arbitration, hearings before the NLRB, internal union governance, women's leadership, employment discrimination, and workplace related immigration issues.
Lola Loustaunau
Assistant Professor
BA in Political Science from the University of Buenos Aires, MS and PhD in Sociology from University of Oregon. As a researcher, teacher and activist, Dr. Loustaunau has led multiple research projects focusing on job quality, public policy, and collective organizing. Her work has been published in Labor Studies Journal, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, and Sociological Perspectives. She has also been a Vice President at Large at the American Federation of Teachers-Oregon, Vice President of Political Education at the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation, among other leadership positions in the labor movement. Her current research focuses on the impacts of COVID-19 on migrant workers in food processing, and their experiences of resistance and collective action.
Donald Taylor
Professor and Director
Donald Taylor (MA) has worked as an organizer, representative, negotiator, business agent, communications director, and education director for unions such as the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE), the hotel workers union (HERE), and the Service Employees' international Union (SEIU). He has also taught labor and employment relations at the University of New Hampshire, the University of Illinois, and Indiana University, and has served as a shop steward and local union president. He has extensive experience in union leadership development, internal organizing, strategic planning, and building organizational capacity, as well as in online education. He is a nationally recognized expert on the constitutional rights of public employees, and developed the website garrityrights.org.
