Mel Horton, vice president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers' (IBEW) District 5, and Ann Twomey, president and founding member of Health Professional and Allied Employees (HPAE) and national vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, will speak at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations' (ILR) Pre-Labor Day Forum Thursday, Sept. 3, at 11:30 a.m. in 305 Ives Hall on the Cornell campus.

The theme of this year's forum is "Changing to Organize: Union Strategy for the 21st Century." All ILR School classes Sept. 3 will be suspended from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. so staff, faculty and students can attend the forum and picnic after the presentations.

Horton, who has been in his current position since 1994, represents 60,000 IBEW members in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and the Panama Canal Zone. Previously he served as IBEW director of industrial organizing in the international office, where he was involved in implementing the union's New Industrial Organizing initiative and the development of the New Organizer Training Programs. He has been active with the union since 1965.

Twomey, with other nurses at Englewood Hospital in N.J., formed an independent union of 250 nurses to gain collective bargaining rights at the hospital in 1974. She was the first president of HPAE, which has grown to more than 7,000 members, and has been a leader in the union ever since. It now includes nurses, health professionals, technicians and support staff from New Jersey and Philadelphia. In 1979, HPAE became affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and created a health care division called Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals; Twomey is vice-chair of the national health care division. In the past two years, HPAE has won nine of 11 organizing elections, providing collective bargaining rights to 2,000 new members, and it won first contracts following each election with the help of the entire labor movement in the counties involved.

The ILR School uses its annual Pre-Labor Day Forum to address and discuss key issues relating to unions.