"A True Warrior for the Labor Movement"

About the Scholarship

The family of L. Rodger Webb established this scholarship to encourage worker advocacy and activism in the labor movement by providing assistance to students in financing their labor education at the Wayne State Labor School and/or Labor School graduates who go on to enroll in the Labor Studies Bachelor of Arts program.

Applicants to this scholarship will be asked to submit a short written statement about their dedication to the Labor Movement and how they intend to move it forward. The Labor@Wayne Scholarship Committee will make award decisions based on the scholarship criteria as well as these student statements.

To make a donation to the L. Rodger Webb Labor Activist Scholarship, please contact our Office of Gift Processing at 313-577-2263 or fundoffice@lists.wayne.edu or use our secure online giving page.

Eligibility and Terms

1. Students enrolled in either the Labor Studies Center's Labor School (non-credit certificate program) or graduates of the Labor School who go on to enroll in the Labor Studies BA (credit) program will be eligible for awards.
2. A minimum GPA is not required.
3. Applicants need not demonstrate financial need.
4. Recipients may use awards for tuition and other educational expenses.
5. Recipients may retain this award provided they continue to meet all criteria in this agreement, but renewal of this award is not automatic. Recipients must reapply and be reevaluated in order to receive a renewal of this award.

About L. Rodger Webb

As fellow attorney and labor activist Mark Porter noted, there is no way to list all of the “how-to” lessons Rodger taught others, “most of which he never realized he was teaching,” such as: "Seize the flag and go forward – but always keep the high ground. Never sink into the swill."

Growing up in severe poverty, Rodger experienced first-hand the effects of economic inequality, and developed a fierce intolerance for injustice of any kind. Adversity became

a catalyst; daunting challenges galvanized him. Rodger’s book-loving Scottish immigrant mother made sure that he attended Michigan State University, and he went on to earn a master’s degree in education from Wayne State University in 1971. He was a civil rights activist and conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, worked as a Vista volunteer in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and taught math to junior-high students in Detroit and Philadelphia before attending Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C.

After his admission to the Michigan bar in 1981, Rodger embarked on his career as a labor advocate and progressive activist in Detroit. Long-time friend and former UWUA local president Rich Harkins remembered Rodger as a “true warrior for the labor movement.”

Rodger's law practice was primarily focused on representing public sector unions. He also represented low-income people in wrongful termination and personal injury cases; in 1989 he won a major judgment for senior citizen victims of a tenement fire caused by landlord negligence - a case turned down by multiple other attorneys. He made an enormous difference in the lives of working people – litigating to support organizing efforts among unrepresented workers and to enforce contractual provisions covering represented workers.

Rodger’s former law partner Alison Paton noted that, “As lead attorney for Michigan AFSCME in hotly-contested litigation that spanned the course of 17 years, Rodger was instrumental in obtaining the right of direct care workers -- who provide care to persons with intellectual disabilities at private residential group homes -- to organize. At the start of the direct care worker organizing drive, the NLRB declined to conduct elections, finding it lacked jurisdiction because the private residential group homes operate under contracts with and funding from the Michigan Department of Mental Health. Thereafter, Rodger successfully established the legal right of these workers to organize under PERA on the basis that the Michigan Department of Mental Health and the private group homes were ‘joint employers.’ However, this precedent was overturned when the NLRB changed course in a 1995 ruling and decided to assert jurisdiction over these workers. Rodger then successfully argued before the NLRB that it should recognize the MERC-conducted elections in which the union had been certified, and not require new elections.”

Rodger truly saw people, and had an unwavering passion to advocate - or as he often put it, “help pull the wagon” - for those who could not advocate for themselves. Solidarity was, for Rodger, a mandate. He helped hundreds of friends, relatives, and strangers over the years. His children learned from him to always strive to “walk the walk” of truth and justice – joining him on picket lines, marching in protests, campaigning at his side for numerous progressive candidates, occupying the Michigan Capitol Building in 2012 to protest the anti-union Right to Work legislation, and, above all, seeking to live with integrity, courage, and generosity of spirit. They remember attending Labor Day parades before they could walk, waving AFSCME flags from atop his shoulders.

In the tradition of endeavoring to stand on the shoulders of those who come before us, his family is honored to establish a labor activist scholarship in his name.