At ILR Union Days, innovation in the labor movement
By Haley Velasco
The Worker Institute at Cornell sponsored Union Days 2015, themed “Labor on the Line: Breaking Boundaries, Building Movements,” April 7-8.
Hosted by the ILR School, the annual event provided students, faculty, alumni and the public with labor-focused events and a keynote speech by Tefere Gebre, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO and the Alice B. Grant Labor Leader in Residence at Cornell.
Gebre spoke about how a union job in college spurred his passion for helping labor. “I was a loader. It was the hardest job that I ever did,” he said. “I was working during my break and this guy came to me and said I couldn’t do that. Someone is telling me that I had work rules and that was how I got into the labor movement.”
Gebre focused on what the United States needs to do as a whole to ensure that all workers are treated well: “Our agenda this year is raising wages … Americans need a raise across the board.”
Events included a panel, “Broadening the Labor Movement, Innovative Organizing,” with Sean Sellers, co-founder and senior investigator at the Fair Food Standards Council; Silvia Fabela, senior campaign coordinator for Making Change at Walmart; Michelle Jim ’14, a strategic campaign organizer for Jobs with Justice; Rana Jaleel, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia Law School; and Patricia Campos-Medina ’96, co-director of the New York State/AFL-CIO Union Leadership Institute.
The event also included a Social Justice Career Fair, presentations by muralist and street artist Mike Alewitz, and a dance choreographed by Jumay Chu, senior lecturer in the Department of Performing and Media Arts.
Haley Veasco ’15 is a writer intern for the ILR School.
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