Tag Archives: Engaging Young Workers

AFL-CIO Young Worker Advisory Council Launched

3 Feb

The AFL-CIO is clearly moving on some of the recommendations from the Next Up Summit last summer, launching a Young Worker Advisory Council similar to their other advisory councils on central labor councils and state federations. Here’ s a new post from the AFL-CIO NOW Blog:

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

Photo credit: Joe Kekeris

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.

Young Trade Unionists Come to DC

3 Feb

We are excited to announce that a DC Chapter of the Young Trade Unionists will be starting up in the Metro DC area next month.  Thanks to a push from Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler and the new Executive Officers of the AFL-CIO to get more young people involved in the labor movement, there have been several groups started around the country.  Now it is our turn!

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.

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

1 Feb

AFL-CIO Now Blog:

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.

Unions seek ways to link with younger workers

11 Jan

from The Michigan Citizen:

Unions seek ways to link with younger workers

By Nyssa Rabinowitz

Capital News Service

LANSING — Union activism has dropped among younger workers, a trend that may bring innovation into union management.

“We don’t communicate the way our parents did,” said Sean Egan, 32, business manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers West Michigan Local 275. “Leadership needs to be more accessible.”

Most of the executive board of Egan’s local, based in Coopersville, is between 26 and 35, and its volunteers are about 35, so it has more participation from this age group than most, Egan said.

Egan became president of the local when he was 25 and served in that position for four years.

Egan is an example of a young union member who actively participates, said Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO.

Many, however, don’t because they don’t see anyone in union leadership who looks like them — all the leaders are older.

For example, most unions still publish newspapers or newsletters to communicate with their members instead of using social media like Facebook, Gaffney said.

And that’s not how much of the younger generation communicates, he said.

The drop in union activism isn’t uncommon, said David Reynolds, a labor historian at Wayne State University.

Union activity regularly goes through cycles, Reynolds said.

When unions’ influence is ebbing, they have less of a presence in new industries and jobs, which is where the majority of the younger workers are, he said. When unions grow, they generally grow in the same new areas and with a strong young worker presence.

The Great Depression is a great example, Reynolds said.

At the end of the Depression, young workers mobilized the union movement and began unionizing quickly. Once people saw that unions could benefit them, it encouraged others to try the same thing at their own workplaces, and within three months, three million workers were organized, he said.

That seems to be happening now, Reynolds said predicting that younger workers will become more involved in the future.

But that won’t happen without some help, the AFL-CIO’s Gaffney said.

The drop in active participation is a challenge for unions across the country, Gaffney said, but those in some states are doing better than others in attracting younger workers.

New York, California and Colorado unions all have more participation among younger workers, Gaffney said, and have done a more effective job marketing themselves to younger members.

Now Gaffney is taking up the charge to move Michigan in that direction.

He plans to reach out to younger leaders for advice on how to inspire younger members.

Egan said younger workers are important because they bring new perspectives and they have a better understanding of work-life balance than older colleagues.

If they don’t become engaged, the role of unions may diminish, Egan said. Unionization rates are going down, and it’s up to the young workers to find a system that works well.

Having someone who looks and talks like them will help spark their interest, Egan said.

For example, his local is moving toward monthly or quarterly webcast meetings so all members can take part, regardless of where they are.

There needs to be more communication between leaders and young workers and e-mail and texting could help bridge that generational gap, Egan said.

In Oregon, Labor’s Next Gen Redefines Union Member | AFL-CIO NOW BLOG

6 Jan

cross-post from AFL-CIO Blog

In Oregon, Labor’s Next Gen Redefines Union Member | AFL-CIO NOW BLOG.

Photo credit: Jaimie Sorenson

Nora Frederickson, AFL-CIO Media fellow, sends us this profile of the Oregon Young Emerging Labor Leaders program.

One week, Oregon’s young workers might be speaking out on the radio. Or they might be dishing up food at a Portland homeless shelter. They might be learning about labor history through the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center. Or they might be biking 18 miles in Portland’s only wintertime bicycle ride.

Through the Young Emerging Labor Leaders (YELL), a new group sponsored by the Oregon AFL-CIO, Oregon’s young workers are getting a chance to foster new pride in holding a union card and are redefining what it means to be a union member. In October 2009, the Oregon AFL-CIO Convention unanimously passed a resolution calling for a young worker program and adding a seat to the General Board for a young representative. In early 2010, the group developed a monthly social calendar and began planning their first-ever convention for August 2010.

The idea for the group came after a group of Oregon’s young workers attended a national conference in June 2010, sponsored by the AFL-CIO as part of a new national outreach program to educate young workers about unions and give them more of a voice within the labor movement. YELL is one of a growing number of union-based outreach programs for young workers, including AFSCME’s national Next Wave program, the Futures Program sponsored by the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, Baltimore’s Young Trade Unionists and Young Workers United in California. [Join YELL on Facebook here.]

At the Oregon convention, more than 40 union members from 14 different affiliate unions traded ideas on the group’s structure and purpose. Nick Gaitaud, a millwright with United Steelworkers (USW) 7150 in Albany, was elected at the convention to represent YELL and continued to ask for input following the convention as he and other organizers laid down an agenda.

I asked people why they wanted to become involved in YELL. And it wasn’t so that we could go phone bank or lobby, even though those things are important. People wanted to be better-informed and wanted to make their union better. They were interested in training and wanted to be a part of their community. They wanted to network—a lot of young workers don’t get the opportunity to network.

Following the convention, YELL quickly got to work. The group hosts a monthly social at a bar in Portland, joined the Labor 2010 phone bank and has sponsored members to attend classes at the university’s Labor Education and Research Center to deepen their knowledge of the union movement.

In the future, the group hopes to provide more opportunities for young workers to learn about the union movement and educate their local communities about unions. Current projects include a job-shadowing program to connect union members with members of Oregon’s Executive Board and organizing a union careers day with local Boy Scout troops.

There are so many workers who you don’t know are union. I’d like people to realize that these are people who live in our community.

Gaitaud encourages other young members interested in bringing young workers together to get plenty of input before determining a group’s goals.

Rather than asking them to spend an hour a month at the union hall or phone-banking, connect them with their interests.

In addition, “time and money really are the biggest thing” to getting a group together.

I can’t ask anyone to go and phone bank unless I’m going to be there. And a lot of the time you will need money to hold an event. The easiest thing to do is to look for free events, and to make connections in your community, like we’re doing with the Boy Scouts.

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