ALPA’s Prater Honored by American Labor Museum
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| ALPA President Capt. John Prater |
Air Line Pilots (ALPA) Capt. John Prater was honored last night as an outstanding labor leader at the annual Sol Stetin Awards Gala. The awards are presented every year by the American Labor Museum, located at the historic Botto House in Haldeon, N.J.
The awards—named in honor of late Textile Workers President Sol Stetin—have been presented annually since 1982, and honor outstanding individuals for their contributions to working people. Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) President Michael Goodwin, who also serves as museum president, said Prater has:
exemplified himself in the airline industry, representing commercial airline pilots, negotiating and servicing ALPA members and is recognized by his peers and colleagues for his great work.
Klein, Cohn, Cobble Win Major Journalism Prizes
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A newspaper reporting team for Bloomberg News, two Washington, D.C., bloggers and a labor historian are among the winners of the 2010 Sidney Hillman Foundation Journalism Awards.
The awards will be presented tonight in a ceremony at The Times Center in New York City.
The Hillman Foundation praised the late Mark Pittman, Bob Ivry, Alison Fitzgerald and Craig Torres who made up the Bloomberg News reporting as “the first to determine the true cost to the taxpayer of the federal bailout of Wall Street.” Bloomberg successfully sued the Federal Reserve to gain access to information about the $2 trillion bailout for Big Banks. Pittman died in November.
Bloggers Jonathan Cohn and Ezra Klein will be honored for their in-depth coverage over the battle for health care reform. Cohn, whose blog The Treatment ended its run on The New Republic website in April, and Klein, who writes the Economic and Domestic Policy, and Lots of It blog for the Washington Post, provided “authoritative, up-to-the minute coverage of health care reform,” the Hillman judges said.
Dorothy Sue Cobble, professor of labor history and labor studies at Rutgers University, will receive the Sol Stetin Award for Labor History. Cobble is the author of the prize-winning books, “Dishing It Out: Waitresses and Their Unions in the Twentieth Century” in 1991 and “The Other Women’s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America,” which won the 2005 Philip Taft Book Prize for the best book in American labor history.
Greenhouse, Wheeler and Green Win Major Journalism Prizes
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| Marcy Wheeler |
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| Steven Greenhouse |
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| James Green |
One of the few remaining labor writers for a major newspaper, a blogger who writes about the workers’ side of the economic crisis and a labor historian are among the winners of the 2009 Sidney Hillman Foundation Journalism Awards.
The annual awards were first presented 1950. Now presented in six categories, the Hillman awards are among the most prestigious given to journalists, photographers, writers and public figures whose work fosters social and economic justice. The foundation is named for Hillman, former president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and a key figure in the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which merged with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1955 to form the AFL-CIO.
The awards will be presented in a May 27 ceremony at the Hudson Theatre at the Millennium Broadway Hotel in New York City.
This year’s winners include Marcy Wheeler, who writes the emptywheel blog on firedoglake.com. Wheeler consistently demonstrates the investigative skills that show what bloggers and those using online tools are uniquely capable of doing. Her keen appreciation to detail and strong empathy with working people shows in her blogs and other writing.
In its description of Wheeler, the Hillman Foundation notes that she has “produced outstanding coverage of the American auto industry crisis.”
Combining her background in the industry with a deep commitment to American workers, her depth of analysis was unrivaled.
Wheeler recently made the front page of The New York Times after she became the first person to notice that a newly released Justice Department memo revealed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been waterboarded 183 times in one month. Her live blogging from the Scooter Libby trial in 2007 is widely regarded as one of the seminal moments in online journalism, the foundation says.
Her fans and supporters recently set a goal to raise $150,000 to allow Wheeler to blog full-time and also to support another investigative blogger to work with her and a researcher to help them. Click here to donate to the fund.
