Western Electric, 1967-1972

Summary: The records in this series offer a glimpse into Chernick's life at Rutgers and his career in industrial relations. Included among these records are studies that Chernick conducted on such topics as worker education, union behavior and benefits, wages, and economic performance in certain industries. Chernick was able to conduct most of his studies through questionnaires and correspondence with workers as well as employers. His investigations of Canadian Industries form one distinct subseries.

The Western Electric subseries focuses on studying how newly hired or National Alliance of Businessmen (NAB) employees, formerly considered the "hardcore unemployed," who worked at the various shops of Western Electric, but especially in Newark, performed when introduced or reintroduced into the labor market. Included with the documentation of this project is a series of audiorecordings of workers (both men and women) and supervisors. These discussions shed light on the workers' positive and negative feelings about their jobs, the challenges they faced in staying employed (such as child care and transportation), the attitudes of supervisors toward these workers, and the pervasive racial tensions of the era.

The Labor Rehabilitation Project subseries centers on the rehabilitation of disabled union members and members of their families in order to return them to gainful employment. These files also focus on determining whether suitable rehabilitation services exist and whether or not they are beneficial or detrimental to workers.

The Manpower subseries focuses on how to integrate certain groups of workers, typically minorities, into the workforce. This subseries contains several grant proposals, some of which were written by Chernick, which focused on determining why these workers had been excluded from the workforce and how they could be integrated into it to enrich their lives and the American economy. These files have been kept in this series and not included in the CETA series as they are more research oriented and exemplify the type of studies that Rutgers IMLR conducted during Chernick's tenure.