AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, the second-highest labor official in the country, brought Advisory Council members to their feet with a rousing speech on April 23 at Weakley Hall in Vacaville.
“We see the American Dream slipping through our fingers,” Shuler warned, but she said that union members have the ability to turn thing around when they stand together and that IBEW 1245 members are showing the way.
“Our opponents thought the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership would be a slam dunk. But the work you did and the solidarity you showed changed the debate,” Shuler said, noting that IBEW 1245 members leafletted the house of Congressman Ami Bera, a swing-vote in the Trans-Pacific trade deal. “How cool is that?” she asked.
Shuler also praised Local 1245’s response to a recent attack on public sector workers by allies of the rabidly anti-union Koch Brothers. Friedrichs vs California Teachers Association threatened to cripple the ability of unions to protect members in the public sector, but the case recently hit a speed bump at the U.S. Supreme Court and Local 1245 is one of the unions now mobilizing public sector employees to fight back.
Shuler called Local 1245 Business Manager Tom Dalzell (left) a “visionary”
“Instead of allowing our opponents to divide us, labor came together, public sector and private sector,” Shuler said, praising Local 1245’s organizing stewards as the “cutting edge” of labor’s response to these attacks. Shuler called Business Manager Tom Dalzell “a visionary” in promoting solidarity, at one point turning to him and saying, “I want to bottle you and spread your ideas around the country.”
Shuler said that utility workers have always had a special place in her heart. Her father grew up poor with four siblings in a one-room cabin, served in Vietnam, and upon his return was hired by Portland General Electric, which Shuler called “the other PGE.” Through hard work, she said, her father “earned a union lineman’s apprenticeship.”
Shuler quickly learned the value of a union and after college became involved in organizing clerical workers at “the other PGE.”
“That experience made me realize that workers coming together for a stronger voice is where I wanted to be. So I went to work full-time for the IBEW and I have never looked back,” Shuler said.