BatesNow | 4/10/2003 | Watson recipient to study labor movements in three countries

Katharine Jensvold Shaw, a Bates College senior from Ithaca, N.Y., received one of 48 prestigious research fellowships awarded in March by the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship Program.

Shaw, a history major at Bates and a student of labor history, won the $22,000 Watson Fellowship for a research proposal titled "NGOs and Labor Unions: Defining and Promoting Workers' Rights: Thailand, Poland, Wales."

In an era when non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are increasingly involved in workers' issues in the Third World and traditional labor unions are declining, Shaw will spent a year in Thailand, Poland and Wales comparing the ways labor unions and NGOs frame labor issues.

"My project will look at the ways in which organizations that are working to improve human rights standards go about doing that," Shaw explains. "I'm particularly interested in how NGOs and labor unions define the problems that they're trying to solve, because I really think that has a lot to do with the kinds of strategies that they employ."

The Watson Fellowship is intended to identify potential leaders and challenge them in ways that foster independence, a global perspective and adaptability to unfamiliar cultures. It funds a year of study focused on a topic of deep importance to the recipient and conducted outside both the formal academic environment and the recipient's home culture.

Shaw chose the three countries on the basis of their sharply contrasting labor-rights environments. Wales is a traditional stronghold of organized labor. In Poland, labor unions formerly defined by their relationship to the communist regime are finding new roles in a market economy, even as NGOs exert a growing influence on labor issues. In Thailand, a country undergoing rapid industrialization, NGOs are protecting workers' interests in a manner once reserved for the labor unions in Western countries.

Shaw's Watson year, which begins in August, will enable her to work side by side with union and NGO personnel. "The only way to really learn about the organizations is to work with them," she says. "I don't think I could ever see myself as a completely objective person, standing aside and just watching what's going on."

"An important part of my project is that I want to be involved in the work that is being done, and if I can help to raise questions about how an organization goes about what it's doing, then I think that can be positive."

Shaw's investigation of NGOs and labor issues has included an internship at a Massachusetts NGO, Boston Mobilization, and a summer of research in London for her honors thesis, which examines how the government and the labor movement in Britain treated the question of strikebreakers during the General Strike of 1926. Shaw's thesis adviser was Professor of History Elizabeth Tobin.

A program of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, of Providence, R.I., the Watson Fellowship was established in 1968 by the wife and children of Thomas J. Watson Sr., the founder of IBM. Fifty selective private liberal arts institutions nominated nearly 200 students for this year's Watson Fellowships. At least one Bates student (and as many as three) has received a fellowship every year since 1985.