AFL-CIO Delegates: Jazzed and Ready to Rock
| 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.”
