"We Are Watching" Theme At Annual NoVA Labor Dinner

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

All three speakers at Friday night’s Northern Virginia Labor Federation Volunteer Recognition Dinner called on union members to pay attention to what elected officials and candidates say -- and do -- as Virginia heads into another election cycle. Noting that “Wisconsin is not an aberration,” keynote speaker Walter Wise (Iron Workers General President, at right), Doris Crouse-Mays (Virginia AFL-CIO President) and Daniel Duncan (NoVA Labor Federation President, at left) said union members are “calling out those who seek Labor’s support between Labor Day and Election Day, but ignore working people’s needs the rest of the time.” The trio reiterated that Virginia union members need to stand in solidarity with their sisters and brothers in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere in the fight to save the right to collective bargaining “because we (already) know what it means – Virginia is one of two states that expressly forbid it for public employees.” More than 300 people attended the annual gathering at the union-contracted Sheraton Premiere at Tysons Corner to honor unionists who volunteered time during 2010 for community and political activities. - photos by Joyce Putnam, OPEIU 2