A description is provided of the Lower Merrimack Valley Workplace Education Project (WEP), an educational project that offers English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) and job-specific education classes to hourly employees in the Semiconductor Division of Alpha Industries. The challenge of the project was to create a WEP that could accommodate the…

Labor unions have provided English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction in the workplace since the early 1900s, to serve a growing immigrant workforce. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, an increase in immigrant population, decline in manufacturing jobs, new technology, and work restructuring brought a new urgency to union-sponsored worker…