Key Labor Archive May Be Inaccessible After Labor College Sells Campus

Labor historians are concerned about what the National Labor College’s decision to sell its campus could mean for their access to the George Meany Memorial Archives & Library, a trove of material on the labor leader who was president of the AFL-CIO for a quarter of a century. According to an FAQ from the National Labor College that was posted today on the H-Labor e-mail list, the college will stop managing the Meany archive as of August 31. The FAQ says the material will be returned to the AFL-CIO, which owns it and is “considering many options” for its future. The implication is that the archive may not be accessible for a while, until those options are sorted out.

The college is selling its campus, in Silver Spring, Md., because of the cost of maintaining the buildings and grounds in an expensive suburb of Washington, D.C. It may also have been impelled to sell the campus after the failure last year of a joint venture with a subsidiary of the Princeton Review. The college plans to move its academic programs online and says it will remain accredited.