Shelley Kessler, a member of Machinists Local 1414, is excited about the energy generated at AFL-CIO conventions. “When you’re in the company of like-minded people who are willing to work at every level on issues like affordable health care, protecting pensions, building communities and core values, then you get reinvigorated,” she says.
Kessler, 51, joined the union movement in 1977 as a member of the Glass and Bottle Blowers when she was working in Owens, Illinois. She joined the Machinists after landing a job as a mechanic at Westinghouse Electric. In 1985, she became a staff member at the San Mateo County Central Labor Council and was elected executive secretary-treasurer in 1997.
Delegates to the 25th AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention meeting this week in Chicago must deal with some serious economic problems, says Kessler. Workers are facing the double onslaught of corporate attacks on jobs and a Bush administration that constantly finds new ways to attack working people. “We need to come up with strategies that will get people’s juices going so that we can stop all this nonsense,” she says.
Kessler says another big challenge facing the union movement is many unions have not begun to train the next generation of leadership. “We have to start reaching back and bringing up younger people, so that when they get older they have a place to go. If we don’t, then this movement will die with us.”
