MORRIS COUNTY — Dr. Jill Schennum, chair of the Department of Sociology, Economics and Anthropology at County College of Morris (CCM), will present at the Pennsylvania Labor History Society and Steelworkers’ Archives conference later this month on the decline of unions and economic disparity.
Schennum is one of four people scheduled to speak at the society’s annual conference to be held September 16 and September 17 at St. John’s Windish Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. She will speak on September 17.
Schennum, of Blairstown, earned her Ph.D. from CUNY in 2011. Her dissertation, “Bethlehem Steelworkers: Reshaping the Industrial Working Class,” focused on the economic inequality that resulted from the loss of union jobs when Bethlehem Steel closed in 2003.
Having worked in Bethlehem as a social worker during the 1980s, Schennum was struck by the image of the steel mills, which gave her a passion to learn more. As a professor of anthropology at CCM since 1998, Schennum continues to research the lives of former steelworkers and the decline of Bethlehem Steel. She has since turned her dissertation into a book, which she expects will be published next year.
