The young woman in the black sweatshirt was indignant. Across the negotiating table, a stern, occasionally sharp-tongued adversary refused to budge — first on wages and now on the organization’s social media policy. “We’re a hospital,” said the woman with marked intensity. “Don’t you agree that our first responsibility is to our patients?”

A cluster of young people nearby hotly debated the fairness of random drug tests for employees. Over in a far corner, a third group traded opinions on whether to accept management’s proposal to offer new hires 401(k)s instead of pensions. “It’s just for new employees,” said one young man, clad in a purple T-shirt. “But we have to think about solidarity,” replied a young woman in clear-framed glasses.

The speakers weren’t impassioned union representatives or managers concerned with the bottom line. They were juniors at Niles West High School, an economically diverse school serving approximately 2,500 students in the Chicago suburbs. The collective bargaining simulation was organized by the DePaul University Labor Education Center, which runs the exercises in roughly 10 high schools a year to introduce students to economic justice and the negotiating power of unions. For most of the students, it was the first time they were exposed to what unions do — not to mention their first encounter with terms like “HR,” “401(k)” and “union security.”

Lessons like these help students gain critical thinking skills and give them an opportunity to learn about workers’ rights and labor history, subjects that are often missing from classroom discussions, educators say. And, with a stack of studies suggesting that the decline of unionized labor since the 1970s has deepened America’s economic inequality, some say teaching teens about organizing might offer a chance of preserving the country’s middle class.

Read the full article about the benefits of teaching kids about labor unions by Caroline Preston at The Hechinger Report.