The more than 400 participants in the Next Up conference, the AFL-CIO’s first-ever Young Workers Summit, developed a game plan for the future that focuses on making sure young union leaders and activists are taken seriously and their ideas are heard at all levels of the union movement.
Following three days in workshops and breakouts, student activists, community allies, a couple of political comedians and professional athletes and young workers generated several key ideas on the best ways to reach younger workers and build the movement.
In reports to the conference’s closing session yesterday (see video), the breakout groups recommended and called for increased mentoring programs to help young union members grow into leadership roles and establishing a national youth mobilization effort as an AFL-CIO priority.
The young workers also called for:
•Organizing a Next Up constituency group.
•Holding a national youth summit each year.
•Opening up seats for the Next Up generation on national, state federation and central local body boards.
•Creating an internship website with information on national, state and local opportunities.
•Creating blogs that highlight best practices for involving young workers.
•Re-branding the union movement to appeal to a wider audience.
When the conference opened, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler identified several key areas where the labor movement must develop effective and relevant strategies to reach out to young workers:
We need to communicate in new ways—using cutting edge technology and messages that appeal to younger people. We need to open up leadership opportunities and provide more mentoring. We need to do a better job of educating the public about the labor movement—who we are and what we do—especially in the schools. We need to adapt our structure and be more open to organizing unconventional industries.
Over the weekend, the young workers engaged in a dialogue with the top leaders of the AFL-CIO, including President Richard Trumka, Shuler and Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker.
In a series of instant electronic polls, summit participants were asked which of five options were the most important effective way to cut through corporate and media clutter about unions and reach out to workers not in unions, and energize union workers who are sitting on the sidelines.
The group selected as their top choice access to better education (36.7 percent), in schools and within unions themselves, on the role of the union movement—from boosting wages and benefits to social activism. Education was followed by creating a better image of unions (22.1 percent), better mentoring of young union members, organizing nontraditional industries (9.4) and greater reliance on social media to communicate (7 percent).
On Saturday, participants heard about the issues facing their fellow young workers in the National Football League, whose collective bargaining contract was terminated two years ago by the team owners. Baltimore Ravens player Domonique Foxworth, a member of the NFL Players Association executive committee, shocked the audience when he reported that only the top players receive the multimillion-dollar contracts, but players who are inactive and disabled get $40,000 a year.
