University of Illinois Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) founding organizers from the 1990s join current GEO collaborative leaders to discuss how young people in our city created and continue to lead a powerful union championing rights for workers. Learn how labor unions begin, and get involved!

These places work because we do.

Dedicated to the memory and ebulliently brilliant and beautiful spirit of GEO founding member, Jonathan Sterne.

Moderator:

·      Loretta Gaffney is UC-AFT Co-chair and lecturer in Labor Studies at UCLA.

Panelists: 

·  Aaron Councilman is GEO’s current Co-president.

·  Freddy Hancock is Co-chair of the GEO Stewards’ Council.

·  After working as a staff organizer for nearly two decades at the Teaching Assistants' Association and then the American Federation of Teachers, Rob Henn is now Lead External Organizer for the Service Employee International Union- Wisconsin. 

·      Toby Higbie is Professor of History and Labor Studies and director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. He writes about the history of organized labor, social movement education, and immigration in the US.

·      Elizabeth Majerus is longtime faculty member and current director of University Laboratory School, and founding member of the Un i Faculty Organization.

·  Steve Vaughan is UniServ Director of Illinois Education Association, NEA.

(Members of other local labor unions will also be in attendance. They will share ways to stand in solidarity with them as they work to protect and advance local workers' rights.)