Burger leads new labor federation
Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of one of PEF’s international affiliates — the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — is now the first woman to head a U.S. labor federation.
Burger was designated chair of Change to Win (CTW) at its founding convention September 27 (her 55th birthday) in St. Louis.
SEIU has been a leader in forming the new labor federation. Change to Win, which grew out of a rift among members of the AFL-CIO that split wide open in July, is made up of seven unions, representing nearly 6 million workers.
The daughter of a nurse and a truck driver, Burger grew up in Levittown, PA, and has spent her career in organized labor.
“Unions are a gift. They allow ordinary working class Americans like me to join my strength with the strength of a truck driver, a hotel porter, a retail worker, a nursing home worker, a carpenter...all of us here today,” she said.
Burger said she has seen the power of union jobs to raise up “whole families, whole communities, whole generations,” but that power has been slowly sinking as union membership has steadily dropped in this country.
The obvious solution, she said, is to organize workers and bring them into the labor movement.
“We will put our money where our mouth is,” she added. “Three-quarters of our resources (will go) to a groundbreaking organizing crusade.”
She pledged to involve “workers of color, women and immigrants” as “decision-making leaders at every level of our movement.”
CTW, she said, will develop “the greatest worker training program in American history,” and will begin by focusing on transforming the lives and communities of hundreds of thousands of workers displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita along the Gulf coast.
— Sherry Halbrook
The
Communicator November 05
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