SEARCH
Labor’s Next Gen Moves Forward with Young Worker Advisory Council
 |
|
Nora Frederickson, AFL-CIO Media fellow, sends us this report on the first Young Worker Advisory Council meeting.
The union movement’s young workers are getting ready to shake things up.
Working off of the short- and long-term goals laid out at last summer’s Next Up Summit, the brand-new Young Worker Advisory Council met in Washington, D.C., this week to put together a three-month plan to engage the next generation of young workers.
The council emerged out of discussions held during the Next Up Summit. Young union workers and activists expressed their desire to have a greater voice in the development of AFL-CIO’s national outreach program for young workers.
Following the summit, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, who has made young worker outreach and mobilization a top priority, began a series of conversations on the composition of the Young Worker Advisory Council and how it should inform the union movement’s outreach to young workers. Says Shuler:
When the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO created this council, our hope was to give young activists and leaders a clear voice in shaping the conversation and how to grow and develop the next generation of labor leaders.
Following the first day of discussions, Chris Lane, a public safety officer from Richmond, Va., and president of Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 2201, said he was pleased with the progress that had been made since last summer.
I’ve been a member of CWA for 13 years. Obviously this effort is still in the infancy stages, but it’s a breath of fresh air for the labor movement.
Shuler says the council’s first meeting marks a major milestone in our efforts to engage young workers.
I am so excited to meet this incredible group of leaders, and I look forward to the unique perspective that their voices will bring to this initiative.
These efforts came to fruition this week as the more than 20 new members of the council—a diverse group of emerging labor leaders from national affiliate unions, state and local labor bodies, constituency groups and Working America—met for the first time in Washington D.C., this week.
Young Worker Advisory Council members include:
Tahir Duckett – Working America
Sara Kuntzler – Denver Area Labor Federation
Reggie Davis – UWUA
Sherrice Wilfong – APWU
Jessica Ingerick – OPEIU
Chris Sloan _ IUPAT
Jessica Hayssen – Minnesota AFL-CIO
Jeremy Redleaf – AFTRA
Chris Lane – CWA
Michelle Wyvill – IAM
Casey Karns – AFSCME
Nick Guitaud – USW
Allison Doherty-LaCasse – AFT
Joe Briggs – NFLPA
Lorenzo Arciniega – IBEW
Jesse Barber – UMWA
Keith Richardson – APWU
Eric Clinton – UNITEHERE!
The council focused its efforts this week on developing concrete next steps covering four young worker priorities:
- Developing a toolkit for young workers to use in starting or leading a young worker group at the local levels
- Connecting young workers with opportunities for training and mentoring
- Developing a brand that resonates with young workers
- Identifying new ways to bring young people into the labor movement.
Members also brainstormed the roles of the council, national unions and the AFL-CIO in the labor movement’s outreach to young workers.
Over the next three months, advisory board members will work with the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions to ensure the Next Up website serves as a resource for young workers managing or starting local groups, survey young workers to find out what kind of mentoring and labor education programs they want access to and examine how to expand existing models for union internship programs and organizer trainings. They will also start planning the next young workers summit, set for this summer.
Sara Kuntzler, political director of the Colorado AFL-CIO and another Council member, put it this way.
We’re at a pivotal moment in the labor movement, and young workers are where the energy is. They are the hope of the movement. It’s so encouraging to work with a group with so much passion, energy, and hope in prioritizing areas of focus for our work with young workers.
 |
Become a Fan on Facebook |  |
Follow Us on Twitter |  |
Subscribe to YouTube |  |
Subscribe to Blog RSS | ||||
3 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
As a senior I am left with a feeling of envy after reading your blog. With so many problems facing the country, unions and working people, I wish I still had the energy, youth and endurance that the Young Worker Advisory Council exhibits.
I have one thought I would like to pose to your group. Today the country is blanketed by TV and radio coverage that is all right wing, anti union, anti labor, and against the interests of working class America. The problem is millionaire actors like Limbaugh, O’Reilley, Beck and all the FOX personalities SOUND like they have our interests at heart, but they don’t.
Their goal is to get the majority of voters riled up about some subject that has nothing to do with pocketbook issues, for instance they use topics like religion, same sex marriage, abortion to get the votes to get in the “Right” candidate in office. Once in office they then pass laws that allow corporations to send jobs overseas, or allow “free trade”, allow corporations to cut labor, cut vacation time, cut benefits all with the threat that if the workers don’t cooperate the company will have to close. Once the company gets all the concessions it can from American workers, it moves everything overseas. This allows management to reap huge profits, and has kept the labor force wage growth to $303 in the last 28 years, (according to economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez) !
An arm of the Young Workers Advisory Council would need to form a core group for education, and to provide updates as needed on ongoing issues. The benefits to your union, and union workers in general would be innumerable. Your contribution to American workers and the stability of our country cannot be measured. Yours may be one of the remaining unsilenced voices, especially because Comcast just purchased NBC/MSNBC, and immediately cancelled Keith Olbermann. It won’t be long before their few remaining liberal leaning news reporters are also canned.
These facts, and thousands more like them, need to get out to American workers, and who better to carry the word than the youth today? If they are armed with truth, and facts (instead of partial truths and out right lies, ala FOX) the real story of what is happening to this country, and to its workers, just might get a fair hearing.
AMEN brother! Nicely put.
I applaud Liz Shuler and the AFL-CIO for creating the Young Workers Advisory Council. We need, however, to make sure young people, including elementary and secondary students, have an opportunity to learn about the history of the labor movement and the economic, political and social contributions it makes to our nation.
I encourage the Council to support expanded efforts to promote this goal by working with the AFT and NEA to make high quality labor-related curriculum resources available to their K-12 and college members and encourage unions to create programs for their members to do the same.
To assist in this effort, we have established the American Labor Studies Center (ALSC) whose mission is to promote the teaching of labor history and examine the role of labor in our society. The ALSC website (www.labor-studies.org) contains a number of excellent teaching resources including labor history lesson plans, organizing and collective bargaining simulations, bibliographies, labor songs, glossary of labor terms, labor quotes, union histories, and much, much more.
Only when young people have a deeper understanding of the struggles and challenges workers have faced throughout our history will we be able to encourage them to be active participants in the labor movement when they enter the workforce.