HOLT BAKER DELIVERS KEYNOTE ADDRESS AT CSEA WOMEN'S CONFERENCE

Arlene Holt Baker

Albany, N.Y.-- National AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker addressed nearly 500 CSEA members at the Desmond Hotel early this morning. Holt Baker spoke about the war on public service workers in advance of the AFL-CIO's nationwide "We Are One" rallies beginning Monday, April 4.

The April 4 date coincides with the anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in Memphis in 1968. King had gone to Memphis to support AFSCME-represented sanitation workers seeking fairness and respect.

The CSEA members from across the state gathered in Albany for the union's biennial Women's Conference.  The weekend was filled with workshops and training programs, giving members and labor activists the necessary tools and resources they need to make an immediate impact on their workplaces and local communities.

Holt Baker, the first African American executive vice president of the AFL-CIO and one of America's leading women in the fight for working families, has been a tenacious grassroots organizer and an international union representative. Holt Baker comes out of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), CSEA's International union.

Holt Baker's kenote address launches our labor movement into a week of events, including several in the Rochester area.  These events will honor the hardworking families of America and deliver the message, "We Are One." Working people, civil rights groups, students, immigrants and communities of faith will join together starting April 4 to stress this message of solidarity.

On Friday, April 1, CSEA Local 828 activists Joe Tichacek and Sue Trottier (far left)
listen intently to workshop facilitator Phillip Trible, Esq., who delivered a seminar titled, "Taking Care of Buniesss:  You, Your Family and Your Life."
photo:  Ove Overmyer