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Shuler: We Need to Let Young People Know About Unions |
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Nearly 300 young activists and students came to Washington, D.C., last week for the A Better Deal 2009 conference, and AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler was on hand to let these young people know that the labor movement is here to fight for them.
Sponsored by Demos and an array of youth and progressive organizations, A Better Deal 2009 looked at jobs, debt, education, health care and other issues facing young people in a challenging economy. The Electrical Workers (IBEW) were there as well and have a great new video on the conference and young people’s concerns about building a strong economic future.
Here’s what Shuler has to say on the need to make the union movement accessible, relevant and attentive to the next generation:
I think now is the perfect time to reach out to young people, because of the economic devastation that we’ve been experiencing. I think young people have been disproportionately affected, and we need to connect the dots for them and make sure they know that the labor movement is the best answer to their economic troubles.
They have in their minds that the labor movement is something their grandparents were involved in, but we have a lot to offer young people today, and we just need to educate them.
To hear more from young people who attended the Demos conference, check out the IBEW at Daily Kos.
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And we need to tell young people,to tell shuler, to support E-verify and not support amnesty for illegal aliens! And that we know when a guy wants to have it both ways.
And what do you say to the “young people” who may technically be “illegal aliens”?
I have heard on radio interviews with a young woman, just graduated hight school, whose parents brought the family to the U.S. fiteen years ago, when
she was an infant. This particular high school graduate was on the honor roll,
fully fluent in English, then applied for college and was informed they needed to prove their citizenship. When she asked her parents for the papers, the parents informed her that they had to citizenship papers. The only way she could now attend college was to pay the tuition rates from foreign students, which she and her family could not afford.
Thus a young person is denied the education essential to become a fully developed human being. This society is denied the many years of productive contribution that this person could make towards improving society for everyone. Just to get a “living wage” job today requires advanced education beyond high school.
This tragedy is being experienced now by millions of working people. This “legalism” is simply allowing these people to be further exploited by corrupt employers in this country forever seeking cheapest labor possible. These undending anti-immigrant and barbaric attacks on undocumented young people, who have often worked hard for an education, who have great dreams of becoming doctors, teachers etc. to help people, are being shattered for no good reason.
Obama, in his “health care reform”, is saying that only citizens will be allowed access to the health care “reform” he is proposing. Thus undocumented millions of working people in this country, without health care, will be serving you food in restaurants, working next to you, riding the bus with you, or even taking care of your children. In this age of “swine flu” and highly infectious diseases, this is another “penny wise, pound foolish” ideas that will destroy many people.
The massive often illegal immigration into this coutry, from countries such as Mexico, where the majority are kept in poverty. is caused by corporate control of U.S. foreign policy. Treaties such as NAFTA, the dumping of corn
into Mexico to drive peasant farmers of the land, the support of local elites who make immense profit out of the impoverishment of their people, etc. is knowledge that the AFL-CIO should be teaching it’s members and all working people.
illegal aliens are not undocumented,they are highly documented in the nation of their birth.
None of us are responsible for the decisions our parents make while we are growing up. But once we are adults, we need to be able to deal with the consequences of their actions. Adult children of illegal immigrants, who have been raised in, educated by, and been beneficiaries of our communities need a path to citizenship that doesn’t penalize them for their parents’ mistakes.
American citizenship is available for a price—one that I certainly could not afford on my wages, and one that would surely be out of the reach of any low wage worker. Thus,poverty has a way of making honest, hard-working people into criminals; people who would be willing to make any necessary sacrifice to give their children a better life. The lack of money makes them invisible and voiceless in our society; and the constant fear that they will be thrown back into the life they escaped from makes them easy targets for exploitation.
It also makes them a target for folks who would lay the blame upon them for all of American societal ills— such as unemployment, health care costs,homelessness, and crime. We could close the borders tomorrow and still have those problems. Then who would we blame?
When we talk to young Americans about unions, and how they will be seen in the future, we need to make absolutely certain that they can see the difference between a union job and a non-union job, and who benefits when the union is absent from the workplace. Where will the money come from for health care, retirement, vacations, holidays and other working family perks? Or will they be told that they simply can’t be afforded any longer?
Even as they take short-term jobs with little promise, they should make that time count for something while they work. On a union job, they might earn something for the future they can count on. But without the ability to collectively bargain for something better, they will have to settle for whatever meager wages and conditions the employer chooses. Look at Walmart. The majority of those workers can’t aspire to the middle class working part- time; many are dependent on the same safety nets that are fast disappearing as states cut their budgets.
The union I belong to has made an enormous difference in my life. My life, and that of my children, was better because of the good wages,working conditions, and benefits bargained for by my union. Do I want that same advantage for future generations? Sure I do. Do the young people understand what we union workers have had to go through so that they can have a better life? They will if we tell them.
When we are at work having 2 classes among us is a blow to our solidarity. As if organizing wasn’t hard enough trying to do it when some of us can be deported when they speak their minds makes it damn near impossible. “Illegal Aliens” serves one person the boss and he uses it to divide us. Believe it or not we need our immigrant co-workers to have the same rights we do so we can work for a better future together.
Solidarity Forever