Happy 100th Anniversary to Oswego County

by Mike Hall, Oct 10, 2008

Here’s a Happy 100th Anniversary shout out to the Oswego County (N.Y.) Labor Council. The council, with more than 30 unions and some 10,000 members, marked the anniversary last month.

Just this week, the Syracuse Post-Standard highlighted the council’s milestone and its fight to keep good jobs with good benefits in the central New York county.

The paper wrote that from filling picket lines to pitching local labor needs to government leaders, the labor council has

been at the forefront of organized labor issues supporting generations of workers in Oswego County.

Council President Daniel Dougherty told the paper about a successful 2005 mobilization that brought county union members together to support workers facing drastic job and benefit cuts in contract negotiations. The talks were at a stand off,

when the Oswego County Labor Council, along with state and local government leaders, intervened with a collective voice, Dougherty said. The reduction or elimination of benefits for [county] union workers was looming, but successful negotiations, spurred in part by the local labor council membership, turned what could have been a loss of jobs into a success story.

“The whole labor community rallied to those guys,” Dougherty said. “That’s the kind of thing that can happen.”

In local and state politics and legislation, the council not only mobilizes union families to get out the vote, but reaches out to lawmakers to educate them on important issues. Dougherty told the Post-Standard:

We can say to them, “This is the working families version of how you can help out with this.”

Click here to read the entire article and here for more on the Oswego County Labor Council and the Central New York Area Labor Federation.

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