USA Today: Organized labor looks to younger workers for renewal

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnist/raasch/2009-09-03-newpolitics_N.htm

By Chuck Raasch, Gannett National Writer
WASHINGTON — It was a pointed pre-Labor Day question to the leadership of the AFL-CIO.

Why has the cultural image of labor gone from "Norma Rae," that classic 1979 film about worker empowerment, to "pinky rings and slicked-back hair?" columnist Mark Shields asked the union's president, John Sweeney, and his likely successor, Richard Trumka.

Sweeney and Trumka have neither pinky rings nor slicked-back hair. But at a breakfast this week with reporters, they acknowledged Shields' point about an image problem.

"We haven't branded ourselves," Trumka said. "We haven't had the resources to be able to do ads about it, and so we are trying to do it by example."

He pointed to the labor movement's growing diversity and to the AFL-CIO's frequent polls that show more young people are looking to the labor movement to help solve their problems.

"I think we have more credibility than corporate leaders right now, or corporate CEOs, or Wall Street types," he said.

When the AFL-CIO meets in Pittsburgh Sept. 13-17, Trumka, now the AFL-CIO's secretary-treasurer, is expected to replace Sweeney, who is retiring after 14 years leading the nation's largest labor coalition through troubling times.

AFL-CIO