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AFL-CIO Delegates: Jazzed and Ready to Rock |
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| Kathy Scott |
| Sylvia Wilson |
| Rick Bloomingdale |
The Jacob L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh is filled with union members and leaders taking part in the AFL-CIO’s 26th Constitutional Convention, many of them first-time convention delegates like Lisha Thayer from Mine Workers Local 717 member from New York. (See Thayer and many other AFL-CIO delegates at our convention video page here.)
“I’m hoping to bring back ideas to get the union involved more, more women involved in the local, with the idea I’d like to come back and say that each one reached each one of us.”
Another first-time convention participant, AFL-CIO Convention delegate Sylvia Wilson, a member of AFT, the Allegheny County (Pa.) Central Labor Council and the A. Philip Randolph Institute, was among more than 500 participants at the AFL-CIO Diversity Conference Sunday in Pittsburgh.
“I want to see what’s going on in the Diversity Conference that I can carry out and apply to what I’m doing….What way can we reach out to bring more minorities in and what can we do as union members to go into the community and continue to bring more people up and elevate them and their status where they can take care of their families and have a living wage.”
Veteran delegate Richard Shaw, secretary-treasurer of the Harris County AFL-CIO Council in Houston, has been to many conventions and is “very excited about renewed activism in the AFL-CIO.”
“We’re certainly going to be working on health care reform and Employee Free Choice Act and I think the excitement of that and the excitement of the new officers is going to re-energize our labor movement. So I’m looking for new energy and new direction from our officers.”
Rick Bloomingdale, secretary-treasurer of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, wants the union movement to come out of this convention
more unified, more pumped up, more excited than ever to help organize millions of more workers who need a voice on the job to help them get better pay, better benefits and a more secure future for themselves and their children. America needs raises, not more credit cards, and the labor movement is the only organization that can do that for them, get better wages on the job, better working conditions and a voice at work.
Like many union delegates, AFSCME member Kathy Scott from Philadelphia is focused on passage of affordable health care and the Employee Free Choice Act.
Obviously I care a lot about health care, that’s a challenge to us, getting health care for our members and I want to get more involved in that movement to get a reasonable bill out of this.
Corine Chillious from Transport Workers (TWU) in Tulsa, Okla., took part in Sunday’s Diversity Conference and says education is key to improving diversity within the union movement and erasing prejudice against women, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and minorities.
Education is the key. You have to open the doors…and involve everybody and utilize the younger people and people like myself who are hungry to push forward instead of doing the same old thing time and time again. Veterans are great, veterans are good, but they need to educate the younger people and the up-and-coming people so we can further education.
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