AFL-CIO Summer School post #1

Dear Part-timers,

As you may know, your dues pay for union training. If the training isn't something that's covered by your professional development AND the PTFA has enough money, we will gladly cover the cost of training (including mileage and food) for YOU. 

Anyhow, you all have paid ($275.00) for my training (via your dues) at this year's AFL-CIO Summer School sponsored by the Labor Education and Research Center (LERC) at the U of O. I've been to other LERC trainings and they have been so informative.

http://pages.uoregon.edu/lerc/

I left Portland at 2:00pm today (Friday) and arrived at 4:00. I've never been to Eugene, let alone the U of O. So...thank you for the trip. We are staying in real dorms, something else I've never seen. My room is quite small and filled with identical, fairly cheap, mass-made furnitue on each side of the room: a tiny single bed, a wardrobe (no closet), a small desk and a dresser. The floor is concrete. The bathrooms & shower are down the hall. It's fine and I am not complaining, just sharing my first dorm-room experience. So far, my roommate has not showed up.

The rest of the campus is beautiful. I walked east across Franklin (road? street?), across a canal and then across the Willamette. There is nice, big, forested park there. I saw a sign which said something about the "Wilamut" nature area. is that the original spelling of "Willamette"? The river has bike/walking paths on both sides for about 5 miles each way.

I probably won't have time to walk it, however, as my day tomorrow is full. My first workshop is from 8:30 to 11:45, then lunch, then my second workshop, then a picnic, icre-cream social, labor film festival, a tour of WPA art & architecture, karaoke, volleyball, frisbee golf and an auction. How cool is that! Thank you!  Sunday AM is my last workship, then I'll drive back home.

Tonight's dinner was great. We had several speakers, then an icebreaker activity. The second speaker was Tom Chamberlain, the Oregon AFL-CIO president. His speech was a lovely surprise; he talked about how it's time for unions to collaborate with other organizations to create a middle class for the 99%. He talked about "workers" rights; not "union" rights. And he had a cool analogy: you can walk slightly downhilll to the right, next to a stream and to a seemingly lovely place. Or you can walk uphill to the left on a dirt road towards the fight for the 99%. 

More tomorrow. Thanks for funding my trip. Jennifer