Top AFL-CIO leader invokes Martin Luther King’s message at ILR forum
January 18 2008
Arlene Holt Baker’s NYC speech puts focus on labor and the presidential race
The new Executive Vice President of the national AFL-CIO, Arlene Holt Baker, invoked the message of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s December 1961 speech to a convention of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) when she addressed a Cornell ILR School Labor Leaders' Breakfast Forum in New York City on January 11, 2008.
Some 60 labor union officers and staff from the New York City metropolitan region listened as Baker recounted King's timeless cry for unity between organized labor and the civil rights movement. Baker, who spoke at the Cornell ILR conference center in Manhattan only a few days before Dr. King's January 15 birthday, is the first African American trade unionist elected to one of the top three leadership positions of the national labor federation.
Promoting unity of purpose in this crucial election year between and among labor unions was a key theme of her presentation. Baker used the occasion of her speech to discuss the 2008 elections and the role of organized labor, which is seeking new national leadership in the White House.
“We are organizing around three basic issues: turning our economy into one that works for working families…reforming health care so it provides affordable, high quality care for all … and restoring the freedom of every worker to join a union so we can regain our strength as a movement and restore our middle class,” Baker said.
Labor unions, she added, desire a new national administration that will seek to strengthen pensions, create a national health care system, and pass legislation to make it easier for unions to ward off anti-union companies that break the law to thwart union organizing drives.
Commenting on the field of presidential candidates, Baker said: “We are entering an incredible moment in history. It is very exciting that we have the real possibility of electing a woman, Hillary Clinton, who cares about working people and our unions; or a black man, Barack Obama, who has worked closely with labor, was a community organizer and a civil rights attorney ; or a southerner, John Edwards, who prides himself on supporting unions and wants to eliminate poverty.”
“As a woman, an African-American and a southerner, I am so proud of the diversity of our candidates,” Baker added.
This April, Baker will visit the ILR School and serve as the keynote speaker for the Union Days event and as this year’s Alice B. Grant labor leader in residence.
-Photo credit to Alana Marcu
Related Destinations
Holt Baker: 2008 a Historic Chance to Turn Around Nation (AFL-CIO Blog)
