The 2014 Labor Notes Conference Educates and Energizes Worldwide Labor Activists

May 18, 2014

Labor Notes is a Detroit-based media and organizing project that has been the voice of union activists who want to “put the movement back in the labor movement” since 1979. Through their magazine, website, books, conferences, and workshops, they promote organizing, aggressive strategies to fight concessions, alliances with workers’ centers, and unions that are run by their members. They encourage connections between workers in different unions, workers centers, communities, industries, and countries to strengthen the movement. More information can be obtained at www.labornotes.org. 

AFM Local 24 (Akron, OH) Secretary-Treasurer and ROPA Conference Delegate Todd Jelen and I were fortunate to attend the 2014 Labor Notes Conference, held April 4-6 in suburban Chicago. Approximate 2,000 labor activists from all over the world gathered there to learn, connect, share, and re-energize from training specialists, speakers, labor educators, and their many colleagues. The international unions represented were from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bangladesh, Canada, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, France, Hong Kong, India, Germany, Iran, Japan, Korea, Liberia, Mexico, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, as well as from all 50 US states.

There was such a huge menu of extremely valuable educational sessions offered that it was difficult to choose. I attended New Innovations in Social Media for Unions and Campaigns, Concessionary Bargaining, Advanced Bargaining Tactics, What Arbitrators Really Think, and Beating Apathy sessions, among others. The Social Media session was particularly intriguing as it outlined innovative methods for contract, organizing, and other labor campaigns that employ Facebook, Twitter, and combinations thereof.

We heard moving presentations from the Chicago Federation of Teachers, and from a panel of union activists from the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who gave us the details of their heroic organizing campaign, and the serious challenges they faced from intrusion by Tennessee Senator Bob Corker and other politicians, and the strong anti-union environment in the region.

The point was made in several speeches that, if unions support important social justice activities, this will likely result in increased union membership because working people will more readily identify unions as organizations that care about people. Labor Notes bridges the gap between labor and social justice by featuring speakers and panelists from both arenas. Among others, we heard moving presentations by Ajamu Dillahunt from the Black Workers for Justice, the American Postal Workers Union, and the Moral Mondays of North Carolina, and Reyna Wences from the Immigrant Youth Justice League (the “undocumented and unafraid”) of Greater Chicago.

The issues we have in our AFM negotiations are the same as those of our sisters and brothers in other unions. We are all seeking fair wages and benefits, and good working conditions, whether bus drivers, nurses, teachers, airline pilots, or musicians. We have so much to learn and share with each other. Thus, it remains critical for AFM members to stay connected with our sisters and brothers in other unions nationwide and worldwide for solidarity, and for our mutual benefit.

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