The ILR School's Union Days events drew hundreds of participants to a panel discussion to hear labor, policy and political leaders, a career fair and other ILR-related events on April 9-10. The theme of this year's event was "Worker Power and the '08 Election: Is Change for Real?" and despite the absence of a keynote speaker due to an emergency, events were well attended.

About 75 students attended a Social Justice Career Fair in Ives Hall, trading resumes for buttons, pens, stickers and summer-job tips from recruiters representing more than 10 organizations. The career fair is held annually in conjunction with Union Days.

Rosemary Fantozzi, a first-year student in the ILR School's masters program at the career fair, reflected on the dead-run pace of her days as a labor organizer just out of college. In 2005 Fantozzi said she worked 14-hour days, sometimes sleeping in a rented Pontiac helping 12,000 Houston city employees get a union.

Fantozzi said she would encourage student colleagues to experience "the sheer hard work, the time, the energy, the mental preparedness, the strategic focus," that comes with working as a union organizer.

"You have to be absolutely relentless," she said.

Scott Phillipson, representing the Service Employees International Union in Syracuse, said "There's a lot of competition among unions for the same qualified people."

To encourage potential recruits, Phillipson said he is always throwing out a hook -- be it skiing, short commutes or great housing prices -- that might attract candidates to Central New York.

Puja Gupta, a researcher in ILR's Department of Labor Education Research, said the fair helps students understand social equity and its role in the global workplace. Meanwhile, Andrew Wolf '10 handed out information for the Cornell Organization for Labor Action, a student-based group.

Wolf, who transferred last fall to ILR from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, shared his plans for the following week: "A bunch of us are skipping school and going to Albany to lobby for workers who get cyclically laid off."

The 2008 election was the focus of a Union Days panel discussion that drew about 150 people. In a question-and-answer session following the panel, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, executive officer of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council and executive director of Working Partnerships USA, voiced her support for Barack Obama.

"We need people to believe that change is possible," she said.

New York State Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton (D-125), who supports Hillary Clinton, said both Obama and Clinton have more progressive voting records than most U.S. senators. But, she added, Clinton has more experience with Republicans.

"She has been spit out by the right-wing attack machine," Lifton said. "I don't think he (Obama) knows what will hit him."

Jane McDonald-Pines, executive assistant to the executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, addressed the nomination issue in the context of international trade -- a lens through which both Clinton and Obama have been critically scrutinized.

"We're not against trade, what we want is fair trade," she said. "No nominee should embrace trade negotiations with Colombia -- where 3,000 trade unionists have been killed."

Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, said both Clinton and Obama have moderate trade-voting records and did not express a preference for either.

Mary Catt is a staff writer for the ILR School.