Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, will address scholars, labor activists and workers’ center organizers at the second annual conference of the Labor Research and Action Network (LRAN) at Georgetown University on June 12. Wilkerson is the author of The Warmth of Other Suns, a magnificent rendition of the great migration of some 6 million black Americans from the rural South to urban areas in the North and West.

For students who wish to work as researchers in unions and at social justice organizations, understanding how to mine data on corporate America is key. Students now have the opportunity to gain such skills through an intensive, hands-on, weeklong course at Cornell University on Strategic Corporate Research. The June 10-15 session in Ithaca, N.Y., is co-sponsored by Cornell and the AFL-CIO Center for Strategic Research. Registration deadline is May 17, 2012.

Several speakers criticized the Republican approach to the reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) during a Tuesday hearing by the Education and the Workforce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.One provision of the the Republican bill would limit the input and participation from labor unions, community colleges and youth organizations on state and local Workforce Investment Boards.

In yet another move to put power in the hands of the 1 percent, House Republicans have introduced legislation to hand over the nation’s publicly administered job training and workforce development system to the corporate sector.