American Labor Merit Badge

Requirement 1 is a working document

It asks for at least eight concerns of American workers, listed and briefly described or given an example. The requirement then supplies about seventeen suggestions, which makes it look like a copying exercise.

It is not, because of what happens next:

2(b) Share the list of issues and concerns you made for requirement 1. Ask the people you communicate with which issues are of greatest interest or concern to them and why.

The list is the thing you put in front of people who do this for a living, and then ask them to rank. That is the conversation requirement 2 exists to produce.

So write the list for a reader, not for a tick. Eight items lifted straight from the examples will survive being written down and will not survive being handed to a shop steward who is asked which of them matter most. Eight you chose, in your own words, with a real example against each, will get you an answer worth reporting.

And keep it. Requirement 7 comes back to the same ground:

7 Choose a labor issue of widespread interest to American workers: an issue in the news currently, or known to you from your work on this merit badge.

Your work on this merit badge is that list, plus whatever the people in requirement 2 told you. The badge names no number there, so this plan draws no arrow, but a reader who kept the list arrives at requirement 7 with the answer already chosen.

Requirement 2 does not need a union office nearby

Read the whole sentence before deciding this badge is impossible where you live:

With your counselor's and parent or guardian's approval and permission, visit the office or attend a meeting of a local union, a central labor council, or an employee organization, or contact one of these organizations via the internet.

Three kinds of organization, and three ways to reach them, one of which is from your desk. The fallback is part of the requirement rather than a substitution you have to ask for.

Two things to notice while you are there:

• 2(c) wants a diagram, from the local level to the national level, if applicable. Those last two words matter: a single independent employee organization may have no national structure, and saying so with a diagram of what does exist is the honest answer.
• Ask the "why" in 2(b). The requirement asks which issues are of greatest interest or concern and why. The ranking without the reasons is half an answer.

Requirement 3 is twelve definitions in one sentence

Twelve, printed as a single discussion, on top of explaining what unions are, what they do and what services they provide to members.

Three of these are pairs built to be confused, and they are where a discussion goes wrong:

• Union shop and open shop differ on whether joining the union is a condition of keeping the job.
• Mediation and arbitration differ on whether the third party's decision binds anybody.
• A strike and a lockout point in opposite directions: one is the employees stopping work, the other is the employer shutting them out. Work stoppage is the wider word that covers both. Get those three straight and the other six terms follow easily.

Requirement 5: four routes, wildly different sizes

Two of the four need permission before you start, and in both cases the permission is on the choice rather than the work. Reading an unapproved biography costs you the reading. Watching an unapproved film costs you the evening.

If you are short of time, 5(c) is the shortest route, provided you get the approval early enough to be useful. If you enjoy reading, 5(d) is the most rewarding and needs the longest lead time. 5(a) is the one people underestimate.

Requirement 7 is three jobs, not one

1. Argue management's side of your chosen issue.
2. Then argue labor's or the employee's side.
3. **Then summarize the basic rights and responsibilities of employers and employees, including union members and nonunion members.** That third part is a separate piece of work covering four categories of person, and it is the one that gets left out because the first two feel like the whole requirement. Note also that you may do this before your counselor or in writing. The written route is the friendlier one if arguing a side you disagree with out loud is not something you fancy.

Two approvals, twice

Requirement 2 is the one to raise first, because arranging a visit or a contact takes longer than the visit does.

The American Labor merit badge, drawn so the list you make first is still useful later. It is not a copy of the requirements: each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year.