We’ll stream the live broadcast of the Young Workers Summit on this page beginning Friday 6/11 at 9:00am
This weekend, hundreds of young workers will gather in Washington DC to talk about the future of unions and young workers’ role in building the labor movement. The “Next Up” Young Workers Summit is the AFL-CIO’s first-ever national gathering of young unionists from around the country.
Young people have always been an important catalyst in building powerful movements for justice. This year marked the 50th anniversary of SNCC, the powerful student organization that raised the stakes of the black liberation struggle in the 1960s with a series of lunch counter sit-ins, marches and voter registration in the south.
The union movement is no different, and now is an especially crucial moment for young workers. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has called the first decade of this century “a lost decade for young workers”:
Young workers are significantly less likely to have health care or economic security than they were 10 years ago. We owe them better. Unless we change it, their economic standards are going to define a new norm—a norm of lower job and living standards. The young workers of today are our country’s future, and we must commit to creating an economy that provides a strong economic future for all.
The gathering of young workers kicks off a new effort by the AFL-CIO to get more young people into unions and fighting for their rights at work and beyond:
The AFL-CIO is committed to a long-term, sustainable young worker program whose objectives are to attract, engage and empower young workers. This summit is the kick-off for that long-term program, and you can be a part of it by participating in the summit and sharing your concerns, contributing your skills and ideas about the role of young workers in shaping programs and lending your voice to developing policies and solutions that will help you make a difference in your own organization.
A number of USAS members and alumni will participate in the summit, and we’ll be streaming the live webcast from the summit above starting on Friday morning.
