Tune in Live on the Web, AFL-CIO President Sweeney at Harvard Forum (2-12-08)

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/02/11/tune-in-live-on-the-web-afl-cio-president-sweeney-at-harvard-forum/

by Mike Hall, Feb 11, 2008

Good jobs are disappearing. Health care costs are soaring. Retirement security’s vanishing. If workers want to buck those trends and improve their lives by joining unions, that freedom is vanishing, too.

Tomorrow evening at Harvard University—and via live webcast—AFL-CIO President John Sweeney will outline how working families can “Turn Around America.”

In the first-ever address by an AFL-CIO president to the influential Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, Sweeney will describe why America is not working for working people and what the AFL-CIO will do to create an America that works for all, including increasing member mobilization this election year and working to reform U.S. labor law to give workers a free chance to form unions. Says Sweeney:

We have an opportunity not only to restore the voice and vitality of the union movement, but to change the direction of our economy and our country. We’re faced with a fundamental choice: continue down the low road we’ve been taking and end up in a swamp of inequality where corporations and the wealthy always get more, or turn around America and head back up to higher ground where working people get a fair share of the wealth they help create.

Following his address, Sweeney will take part in an interview and a question and answer session with the audience. You can see the live webcast of the forum on Feb. 12 at 6 p.m. at www.iop.harvard.edu/events_forum.html.

The event is sponsored by the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.