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Arlene Baker is AFL-CIO Exec. VP

The Executive Council of the 10-million-member American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations penned another chapter in labor history on Sept. 21, 2007, when it unanimously elected Arlene Holt Baker executive vice president. Ms. Baker, a grassroots organizer for 30 years and a former California AFSCME leader, is the first African American to serve in one of the AFL-CIO’s top three executive offices.

As an assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, Baker oversaw the federation’s Gulf Coast recovery operation, including an apprentice program for Katrina victims.

At a Jan. labor breakfast sponsored by Cornell University in midtown Manhattan, Baker spoke on today’s exciting political possibilities, the challenge of organizing and the need to engage young people in the labor movement.

In a few months, the country will elect a woman, a Southerner or an African American as its next president, Baker said. She stressed that it is just as important to elect a Democratic Congress to give that president the necessary support.

“Labor has helped change the political debate,” moving it away from the bedroom and focusing “on the issues affecting us all: the economy, affordable health care, the right to join a union and rebuilding the middle class,” she said.

Baker, a Fort Worth, Texas, native born to a day laborer and a domestic worker, also said unions need to step up their organizing now, especially among immigrant populations and those toiling in low-wage jobs.

“Low-wage jobs become good jobs when they become union jobs,” she said.