A State of the Union Address for Today’s Labor Market Realities

“Our nation’s teenagers and many young adults ages 20-29 are working at a considerably lower rate today than at any time since the end of World War Two. Absence of work experience in the teen years and early 20s prevents our youth from acquiring marketable occupational skills, solid work habits, the soft skills demanded by employers, and opportunities to interact with adults and observe the skills and behaviors needed to succeed at work. Absence of early work experience will reduce their employment, wages, and training opportunities in their mid 20s. These problems are not confined to young adults lacking college degrees. Too many of our new college graduates are left either jobless or holding jobs that do not utilize the skills and knowledge that they acquired in college, reducing the return on their human capital investments and those of society.

A variety of actions are needed to improve the employment prospects of these young workers. We will work with states and local workforce development boards to expand internship opportunities and paid employment of high school students both year round and during the summer, increase the hiring of career specialists to prepare them to make the transition from high school to the world of work, and work with the nation’s employers to expand new youth apprenticeship opportunities, and provide subsidized employment in the summer for the nation’s jobless at-risk youth. We also will experiment with employer wage subsidies to promote the full-time employment of out-of-school youth, and we shall work with colleges and universities to provide additional internships and cooperative education positions for our college students to facilitate their transition to the labor market upon graduation.”

The Youth Unemployment Bomb:

From Cairo to London to Brooklyn, too many young people are jobless and disaffected. Inside the global effort to put the next generation to work

“An economy that can’t generate enough jobs to absorb its young people has created a lost generation of the disaffected, unemployed, or underemployed—including growing numbers of recent college graduates for whom the post-crash economy has little to offer. Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution was not the first time these alienated men and women have made themselves heard. Last year, British students outraged by proposed tuition increases—at a moment when a college education is no guarantee of prosperity—attacked the Conservative Party’s headquarters in London and pummeled a limousine carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla Bowles. Scuffles with police have repeatedly broken out at student demonstrations across Continental Europe. And last March in Oakland, Calif., students protesting tuition hikes walked onto Interstate 880, shutting it down for an hour in both directions.

More common is the quiet desperation of a generation in “waithood,” suspended short of fully employed adulthood. At 26, Sandy Brown of Brooklyn, N.Y., is a college graduate and a mother of two who hasn’t worked in seven months. “I used to be a manager at a Duane Reade [drugstore] in Manhattan, but they laid me off. I’ve looked for work everywhere and I can’t find nothing,” she says. “It’s like I got my diploma for nothing.”

While the details differ from one nation to the next, the common element is failure—not just of young people to find a place in society, but of society itself to harness the energy, intelligence, and enthusiasm of the next generation. Here’s what makes it extra-worrisome: The world is aging. In many countries the young are being crushed by a gerontocracy of older workers who appear determined to cling to the better jobs as long as possible and then, when they do retire, demand impossibly rich private and public pensions that the younger generation will be forced to shoulder.”

So here is the main question… ignoring the frame of a choice between protecting seasoned workers or nurturing young workers… what can we do to expand job opportunities for young workers? And what can unions do to prevent a lost generation?

The end of the article returns to the standard anti-worker propaganda that minimum wage laws and unions decrease hiring. We know these to be empirically false, but if young workers are looking for institutions to blame how do we make sure this propaganda does not take off and young workers see the labor movement as part of the solution?

Labor’s Next Gen Moves Forward with Young Worker Advisory Council

Nora Frederickson, AFL-CIO Media fellow, sends us this report on the first Young Worker Advisory Council meeting.

The union movement’s young workers are getting ready to shake things up.

Working off of the short- and long-term goals laid out at last summer’s Next Up Summit, the brand-new Young Worker Advisory Council met in Washington, D.C., this week to put together a three-month plan to engage the next generation of young workers.

The council emerged out of discussions held during the Next Up Summit. Young union workers and activists expressed their desire to have a greater voice in the development of AFL-CIO’s national outreach program for young workers.

Following the summit, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, who has made young worker outreach and mobilization a top priority, began a series of conversations on the composition of the Young Worker Advisory Council and how it should inform the union movement’s outreach to young workers. Says Shuler:

When the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO created this council, our hope was to give young activists and leaders a clear voice in shaping the conversation and how to grow and develop the next generation of labor leaders.

Following the first day of discussions, Chris Lane, a public safety officer from Richmond, Va., and president of Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 2201, said he was pleased with the progress that had been made since last summer.

I’ve been a member of CWA for 13 years. Obviously this effort is still in the infancy stages, but it’s a breath of fresh air for the labor movement.

Shuler says the council’s first meeting marks a major milestone in our efforts to engage young workers.

I am so excited to meet this incredible group of leaders, and I look forward to the unique perspective that their voices will bring to this initiative.

These efforts came to fruition this week as the more than 20 new members of the council—a diverse group of emerging labor leaders from national affiliate unions, state and local labor bodies, constituency groups and Working America—met for the first time in Washington D.C., this week.

Young Worker Advisory Council members include:

Tahir Duckett – Working America
Sara Kuntzler – Denver Area Labor Federation
Reggie Davis – UWUA
Sherrice Wilfong – APWU
Jessica Ingerick – OPEIU
Chris Sloan _ IUPAT
Jessica Hayssen – Minnesota AFL-CIO
Jeremy Redleaf – AFTRA
Chris Lane – CWA
Michelle Wyvill – IAM
Casey Karns – AFSCME
Nick Guitaud – USW
Allison Doherty-LaCasse – AFT
Joe Briggs – NFLPA
Lorenzo Arciniega – IBEW
Jesse Barber – UMWA
Keith Richardson – APWU
Eric Clinton – UNITEHERE!

The council focused its efforts this week on developing concrete next steps covering four young worker priorities:

• Developing a toolkit for young workers to use in starting or leading a young worker group at the local levels
• Connecting young workers with opportunities for training and mentoring
• Developing a brand that resonates with young workers
• Identifying new ways to bring young people into the labor movement.

Members also brainstormed the roles of the council, national unions and the AFL-CIO  in the labor movement’s outreach to young workers.

Over the next three months, advisory board members will work with the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions to ensure the Next Up website serves as a resource for young workers managing or starting local groups, survey young workers to find out what kind of mentoring and labor education programs they want access to and examine how to expand existing models for union internship programs and organizer trainings. They will also start planning the next young workers summit, set for this summer.

Sara Kuntzler, political director of the Colorado AFL-CIO and another Council member, put it this way.

We’re at a pivotal moment in the labor movement, and young workers are where the energy is. They are the hope of the movement. It’s so encouraging to work with a group with so much passion, energy, and hope in prioritizing areas of focus for our work with young workers.

Greater Boston Labor Council’s Futures Committee is putting on: “Organizing Our Future.” The goal of the conference is to foster and develop the skills of young union members to lead the next generation of the labor movement. Workshops will include “Organizing 101” and “Re-Branding the Labor Movement through Multimedia Technology.” Our guest speaker will be Boston City Councillor-At-Large Felix G. Arroyo.

The conference is open to young union members who are 35 years old and younger. We would greatly appreciate it if GBLC affiliates would send representatives from their local unions.

Attendance is FREE. Childcare will be provided upon Request.

Please RSVP to the GBLC Organizer Rosa Blumenfeld by Friday, February 18th, 2011. Rosa can be reached at the office at 617-723-2370, on her cell at 617-460-9821 or via email at rblumenfeld@gblc.us.

Our goal is to create a more active young worker constituent in the labor movement.  The advantages of being a Union member go beyond having safe working conditions and benefits- but being able to stand together to improve the lives of fellow Americans.  By creating a space for young workers to learn from each other about the labor movement and each others struggles, we will create solidarity that will ensure the future of the movement will be stronger than ever before.  We already have an incredible history, but now it is our generation’s time to make our mark!

We would like to invite all workers under 35 to join us at our first meeting.  Pizza and sodas will be served and there will be no charge to anyone who attends.  The meeting will be held on February 16th at 6pm at the Painters and Allied Trades Hall, 4700 Boston Way, Lanham, MD 20706.  If anyone has any questions or suggestions, please contact us at dcyoungtradeunionists@gmail.com.

Click here to see the February Meeting Flier.

The arrests happened when students broke away from a larger joint rally calling for a Future That Works. According to one blog, StrongerUnions, the event, was sponsored by the Trade Unions Congress – in partnership with the National Union of Students and University and College Union to “highlight the impact of the  coalition government’s programme of cuts and ‘reforms’  on young workers, students and young people in general.”

Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) Connects College Campuses to Union Movement

AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow Jennifer Angarita joins Chris Hicks, Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) coordinator, to discuss the parallels between campus and community organizing.

Founded in 1999 as a joint initiative between Jobs with Justice and the United States Student Association, the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) engages student activists with economic justice campaigns in their communities and campuses.

Across the country, students in local SLAP chapters meet to organize around issues that affect both students and workers. Currently, campuses are working together to campaign against dramatic state budget cuts that threaten the layoffs of thousands of workers and increase fee tuitions, which leave students with astronomical amounts of debt.

As coordinator, Chris Hicks helps student activists build relationships with local unions and community and faith-based groups and Jobs with Justice coalitions. Hicks said:

SLAP supports the growing student movement for economic justice by making links between campus and community organizing, providing skills training to build lasting student organizations, and developing campaigns that win concrete victories for working families while breaking the poverty cycle by fighting for access to higher education and full and fair employment.

Every year from March 28 to April 4, SLAP organizes more than 150 campuses during the National Student Labor Week of Action. Across the country, students hold hundreds of events to celebrate the lives of César Chávez and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and build solidarity between students and workers.

Before joining SLAP, Hicks, a recent college grad from Wichita State University, worked as a union organizer for SEIU. His first memory of the union movement came from his mother’s attempt to organize her workplace. The experience helped to expose Hicks to the collective power of working people.

For Hicks, the student and union movements have always gone hand in hand.

Students graduate [and] want the best workplace conditions possible. The interest of the union movement is the interest of the student movement, and that goes both ways. Students should care [about unions] because as soon as they graduate, the labor movement is where they will be. If they don’t fight as students to protect jobs, to stop corporate greed and to stand with workers, then they will be worse off for it. If they do those things, though, and understand that what directly affects workers, indirectly affects them, they will be much better off.

Learn more about the Student Labor Week of Action at www.studentlabor.org. For individuals or groups interested in getting involved with SLAP, please contact slap@jwj.org.

Corporations and their paid-for politicians have caused the worst economic crisis since the 1930′s Depression. Yet in his State of the Union Address, the President talked about a faster Internet and praised Facebook and Google…all the while ignoring mention of the economic reality and the Wall Street scoundrels who were responsible. Today young people and elders gathered in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco for a rally and press conference to demand more jobs for youth. They stood together to commit to the fight to save social security, for now and for always.

California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA) and allies including Just Cause, the Gray Panthers, and the Raging Grannies gathered in front of the San Francisco Federal Building the day after the President’s State of the Union Address to say: Attacking Social Security is both cruel and unnecessary. It needs to stop.

In his State of the Union address Obama called for safeguarding Social Security for future generations. He called for bipartisan support of the program, but given that Republicans would have the public believe that Social Security is unsustainable and a giant contributor to the federal budget deficits, the President gave no indication of how this can happen.

Young workers at today’s rally explained why tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals do not generate jobs, and said major jobs programs are necessary. A banner put the message succinctly: Cutting Social Security Is NOT a Stimulus…Creating Jobs Programs IS a Stimulus.

Speakers commented that the deficit hawks and the right-wingers are just plain wrong…there is abundant proof that there IS NO Social Security crisis. They said the obvious step to forestall any perceived shortfall is to raise or eliminate the cap on payroll taxes so that wealthy earners shoulder a fairer share of the burden. One of the Raging Grannies said, “Americans have enough economic problems to worry about without being frightened that their Social Security benefits will be cut”.

CARA members passed out fliers urging people to call Senators Feinstein (415-393-0707) and Boxer (415-403-0100) as well as their Congressperson to say NO cuts or privitization of Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. Tell them we need jobs programs and full funding for public education.

Has anyone noticed that new unemployment claims just climbed by 51,000 to 454,000? Maybe we’re tired of being reminded about the jobless rate. It was politely ignored in President Obama’s State of the Union Address, even as he promised to boost opportunities for the next generation.

Yet the next generation is at the center of unemployment epidemic….