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Labor Journalists Present Awards, Gear Up for Employee Free Choice Push |
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Labor journalists from across the country, members of the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA), today celebrated working people’s victories on Election Day and discussed ways to build on the enthusiasm and commitment shown during the 2008 election.
Meeting at AFL-CIO here in Washington, D.C., members of the organization also recognized their peers who made outstanding contributions to labor journalism in the past year. The ILCA presented its top prize, the Max Steinbock Award to Susan Burke for her article, “When Your Mental State Cries ‘Mayday,’ Your Union Stands By You” in the Air Line Pilot magazine, published by the Air Line Pilots (ALPA).
The article describes the efforts of ALPA’s Human Performance Structure to help members deal with the extreme stress they have been experiencing since Sept. 11 and the added pressures of contract devaluations, bankruptcies, fatigue, lack of respect from management and a host of other workplace struggles. Click here to read Burke’s winning article and here for a complete list of all the winners.
AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker praised the labor journalists as “the unsung heroes of our labor movement,” and particularly pointed out the role that the labor press played in the 2008 election.
The numbers tell only a part of the story. The work I saw across the country as I traveled was an inspiration and a hopeful indicator of what we will be able to do in the days to come. I saw working people taking the future of our country into their own hands. The work you did was a major, major factor in getting us where we are.
[The ILCA awards] are a recognition of the vital role you play in communicating with our members, giving them the unvarnished truth about the great issues facing us as well as the challenges facing the labor movement and we know that so often you do it under tough circumstances.
Holt Baker told the more than 200 participants that the heart of our nation’s economic recovery is the Employee Free Choice Act.
We know that whatever else we are able to achieve, we won’t create economic growth that is broadly shared unless we restore the freedom of working people to make their own decision to join a union and bargain with their employers for better wages and benefits for a better future for their children and the next generation. The centerpiece is passing the Employee Free Choice Act, which will make it easier for workers to join our unions, while making it harder for employers to interfere with the freedom of workers to organize. This is key to rebuilding the middle class.
To better deliver the message to working people about the Employee Free Choice Act, the labor journalists also hosted a panel of key organizing and communications staff to discuss the best techniques to mobilize support for the bill. The panel included Ken Zinn, director of the AFL-CIO Organizing Department’s Center for Strategic Research; Bob Callahan, Change to Win’s Employee Free Choice Act campaign director; and Liz Cattaneo, communications director for American Rights at Work.
4 Comments
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We don’t get “the unvarnished truth about the great issues facing us as well as the challenges facing the labor movement”. We get the spin and divisive rhetoric from labors point of view. The AFL-CIO website is only one of many websites that I check daily to gain a broader perspective of what is really happening.
This website is a good point of reference for anyone who only wants one point of view. By using the example of the presidential campaigns there were plenty of lies and misdirection in articles here. But nobody would know unless they did more research.
The ILCA members are not giving us the unvarnished truth. They are giving us information based on a specific ideology, just like the others.
If we were to get the unvarnished truth then there would of been articles about the Democrats intricate involvement in the sub prime mortgage debacle going as far back as Carter and Clinton but I did not see any of that here. I did see a lot of blame going to Bush and none going to ACORN. Just a minor oversight I’m sure.
Right, because if we don’t make sure to blame the poor, we must only be reporting the “partial” truth. Of course, this blog does not present all sides of the issue. It’s a blog! But it does counter the “broader perspective” found on those websites that distort and lie about the nature of the housing problem.
Listen, you can blame poor people all you want for taking out loans they couldn’t afford, but in not one case, is there any evidence that a bank was forced to give a loan to anybody. I don’t think any poor folks held a gun to their banker’s head and said, “Give me a loan!” Even with the pressure from the Democrats, it is the responsibility of the people with the money to make smart loans. If you loan money to a friend that you KNOW has a bad record of repaying, then who’s fault is it really? You’re the dope for giving out the money. But, if you also have a ponzi scheme set up where you can sell that debt and unload the risk to someone else, then you’re not only irresponsible, you’re borderline criminal.
How did the poor get mixed up in this? I was commenting on the statement in the article referring to the awards of excellence for giving us the unvarnished truth. I don’t think that is the case (the unvarnished truth part) I guess you missed the point and didn’t like the example I used to back it up.
I attended the event and actually saw the articles, films and website stories that received the awards. My comments are based on real events and facts related to the ILCA Awards and not just some ideological point of view.
They absolutely did tell truthful stories about the plight of various groups of American workers.
These stories would never have been covered by Corporate Media.
It was a great event. Everyone involved in putting it together deserves our praise and admiration. They certainly have mine!