Unlike the young people on the TV show “The Real World” who live in a $5 million mansion and spend their time mired in reality TV drama, today’s young workers are living more like the folks on “Survivor,” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler said.

Delivering the Philip Murray ^[1] Memorial Labor Lecture yesterday at Pennsylvania State University, Shuler said the reality is that young workers are hurting and the best way to get off that “Survivor” island is a union card.

No matter what your age, Shuler said, everyone agrees that ”our shared priority must be leading the fight for good jobs in America and rebuilding our economy so it works for people who work for a living—and that includes most of us.”

Creating the same kind of fundamental change that took place after the Depression and during the civil rights movement will require unity, she said.

What we need is massive—a fundamental restructuring of the economy—a complete reversal of a 30-year, corporate-driven campaign to deprive working people of wages, security, a middle class, a strong government, a healthy democracy and power.

But it will take all of us—young, middle-aged and older, too—to change it.

And the more we work together, the stronger we are.

A recent AFL-CIO survey ^[2] of workers between the ages of 18 and 34 shows why young workers need unions. The survey found one in three young workers worries about being able to find a full-time job with benefits. Only 31 percent make enough money to cover their bills and put some aside—and 31 percent are uninsured. A third live with their parents.

This generation of young workers is stepping into a changing economy that expects them to move frequently from job to job, Shuler said:

But no one has built the new structures to provide income security and health care and retirement benefits that previously came with tenure.

Shuler is leading a major AFL-CIO young worker initiative to develop the leadership skills of young union members and enable unions to appeal to young, unorganized workers. She says unions must recognize the different work world that young people are entering and make changes to better represent their needs:

We haven’t done well enough at changing ourselves to meet the realities of your lives and your place in the world of work, rather than expecting young workers to fit neatly into the 9-to-5 office or plant jobs we’re used to when what you need or want or are able to get may be part-time work, contract work, work you can do at home on a laptop.

The federation’s young worker program will continue its kick off this weekend in San Diego with the second in a series of forums with young union and community leaders over the next two months. The regional forums will lead up to the first-ever AFL-CIO Youth Summit in early June, where young trade unionists will explore how younger workers ^[2] can become even more involved in helping build the kind of country we all want to live in.