KI Hosts Talk with Union Leaders on Work-Life

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On February 25, 2011, the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor and the Labor Project for Working Families sponsored a talk with new labor leaders to discuss steps unions are taking to adopt more family-friendly policies.
On the panel were AFL-CIO’s Liz Shuler, SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry, Veda Shook of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, and Larry Hanley representing the Amalgamated Transit Union. Heather Boushey of the Center for American Progress moderated the conversation. The leaders spoke about challenges specific to their members as well as broader issues facing all workers.
See below an except of Carol Joyner’s profiled of event in an article in the Huffington Post.

“But now, the realities of our changing workplace call for different solutions and new standards. Women represent half the workforce and 70 percent of mothers with kids work outside the home. These stark changes alone result in unprecedented challenges for families. Who cares for children, or elderly and disabled family members, if no one is home? At the same time, working people continue to wrestle with the blunt impacts of the recession. As more of the nation’s wealth gets shifted to the rich and budget cuts threaten the economic security of millions, we have to find new ways to help Americans respond to the 21st Century demands of work and family.

Last week, a group of dynamic new labor leaders gathered in Washington, DC to do just that. Working with Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, Labor Project on Working Families brought together Liz Shuler of the AFL-CIO, Mary Kay Henry of SEIU, Veda Shook of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, and Larry Hanley, of the Amalgamated Transit Union to ask: what can we do to make a more family-friendly economy?”

Find video excerpts of remarks and panel discussion at the Labor Project for Working Families.