National Labor Leader Stewart Acuff Will Speak At UMass Amherst on May 1st

The following is from a press release sent out by Western Massachusetts Jobs With Justice:

NATIONAL LABOR LEADER TO SPEAK AT
UMASS AMHERST ON MAY 1
Will Urge Listeners to Struggle for Our Right to Good Green Jobs
 
Stewart Acuff, Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO, will participate in a celebration of May Day, International Workers’ Day, on Friday, May 1, in the Campus Center Auditorium of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  The celebration begins at 6:30pm with songs by The Raging Grannies, José Ayerve, Tom Neilson and Kat Allen, and concludes at 9pm after songs by Red Valley Fog, Jay Mankita, and Verne McArthur.  Acuff speaks at 7pm.
 
The event is a fundraiser for Western Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, a local coalition which is part of a national coalition of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations in the struggle for workers’ rights.  Acuff serves on the National Jobs with Justice Board.  Western Mass “J with J” traditionally celebrates May Day.  No one will be turned away if unable to make a donation.
 
The theme of this year’s celebration is Our Right to Good Green Jobs, and is co-hosted by Co-op Power, a regional network of local communities creating a multi-class, multi-racial movement for a sustainable and just energy future.  Acuff will rally listeners to struggle for an economic recovery that puts Main Street before Wall Street, passes the Employee Free Choice Act and restores workers' right to organize, ensures health care for all, creates good green jobs, and holds bailed out corporations accountable to the people.
 
Other organizations co-hosting the event include: WMUA Radio 91.1FM, UMass Labor Relations & Research Center, UMass Labor/Management Workplace Education, UMass Graduate Student Senate, UMass Student Government Association, University Staff Association/Massachusetts Teachers Association, AFSCME Local 1776, Massachusetts Society of Professors/MTA, American Friends Service Committee, and Pioneer Valley AFL-CIO (list still in formation).
 
Stewart Acuff was named Assistant to the President in July 2008 by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who noted Acuff’s “strong leadership skills and a deep passion for the potential of unions to lift working people's lives.” As Assistant to the President, Acuff champions one of the highest priorities of the federation—passing the Employee Free Choice Act to restore the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively to America’s workers.
 
From 2002 to 2008, Acuff served as Director of Organizing for the AFL-CIO, coordinating strategies across the federation’s 56 member unions to help working men and women join and form unions.  He has been a community organizer and union organizer for 30 years.  From 1977 to 1982, he worked as a community organizer in Missouri, Texas, Tennessee, and New Hampshire for organizations affiliated with ACORN and Citizen Action.
 
In 1982, he joined the union movement as the organizing coordinator for the Service Employees International Union in Texas, where he was responsible for a campaign in which employees of 12 Beverly Enterprises nursing homes organized into the SEIU.  In 1985, he became executive director of the Georgia State Employees Union/SEIU Local 1985.  He helped build a union of 3,000 state workers despite the fact that public employees in Georgia had no collective bargaining rights, no dues deduction from paychecks (“check-off”), no rights to meet and confer, and no provisions for union recognition.
 
Acuff was elected president of the Atlanta Labor Council in 1991, where he served for nine years.  He organized and led the successful campaign to unionize the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.  In 2000, he joined the AFL-CIO staff as deputy director of field mobilization for the Midwest region.  He served as deputy director of organizing from 2001 until becoming director.
           
Acuff writes and speaks extensively.  He has written articles for the Atlanta Constitution, Labor Research Review, In These Times, The Nation, Foreign Policy and Focus Magazine, Labor Studies Journal, New Labor Forum and several Georgia newspapers. He also has written essays in Which Way for Organized Labor? (edited by Bruce Nissen) and Organizing for Justice in Our Communities (edited by Immanuel Ness and Stuart Eimer). He is a member of the Federal Reserve Bank Advisory Council, the National Board of Directors of Jobs with Justice, the First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta, and numerous other organizations.
 
Acuff was born December 17, 1954, in Trezevant, Tenn. He graduated from the University of Missouri magna cum laude with honors in sociology.  He lives in Silver Spring, Md., with his wife, Mary Denham, and their children, Samuel and Sydney.
 
»