Founded in 1975, the Labor Institute develops, tests, evaluates, and shares education and policy programs for unions, environmental organizations, community groups, and immigrant worker centers on workplace health and safety, the environment, working class politics, economics, and movement building. The idea for creating this Institute came from Tony Mazzocchi (1926-2002), the visionary labor and environmental leader who was a longtime official with the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) union, now part of the United Steelworkers (USW).  Mazzocchi is widely credited with founding the modern occupational health and safety movement and pioneering some of the first labor-environment alliances.

The Labor Institute makes every effort to ensure that our work is cross-cutting and supports base-building, by first acknowledging the interdependence and interconnectedness of the problems and challenges we all face, and second, by focusing our strategies on shared solutions that, whenever and wherever possible, forge and fortify alliances and partnerships.