around the uft
Eliminating poverty summit
Mar 27, 2008 5:47 PM
UFT President Randi Weingarten joined some 150 metropolitan-area labor, community, non-profit and political leaders at the Summit on Eliminating Poverty Among the Working Poor sponsored by Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ in Manhattan on March 13 and 14. As a member of a panel discussing “Industry-Targeted Approaches for Improving Low-Wage Jobs,” Weingarten outlined the UFT’s winning struggle to organize 28,000 low-wage home child care providers only after the union was able to win a change in public policy granting the providers the right to organize.
Weingarten reminds participants, “Collective bargaining is still the main vehicle for labor to negotiate for better wages, better benefits and for respect for the dignity of work and to eliminate poverty.” Looking on are (from second left) panel moderator Steven Greenhouse of The New York Times and panelists Laphonza Butler, Michael Elsas and Jerome Ringo.
