This is a cross-post, by Justine Winnie, from The Stand, a project of the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) and its affiliated unions. Winnie of OPEIU Local 8 is the newly elected recording secretary for WA YELL. 

More than 50 young leaders and allies converged Aug. 5 in Wenatchee for the Washington Young Emerging Labor Leaders’ (WA YELL's) first annual convention. Members from diverse corners of the state kicked off their time at the WSLC’s convention with a bang and brought their trademark spark and dedication to movement-building across industries, unions and generations.

If Julie Garrett wasn’t in her union, she says she would be working a minimum wage job with no benefits, barely able to support her 4-year-old daughter.

Young people need to know what we’re facing…corporations are taking over and workers are losing out. If we didn’t have unions, we’d all be working for minimum wage, or much lower.

Garrett, 35, a member of the Federation of Social Workers (IUE-CWA) Local 81381 in Rochester, N.Y., and an employee in the Monroe County Department of Social Work, is one of 62 young labor leaders who traveled all over the United States to convene at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., for the first Young Worker Leadership Institute this weekend. 

Check out the AFL-CIO's new Innovators website feature, "Not Your Daddy's Labor Movement," here.

Leave behind what you know about Robert's Rules of Order and structured union meetings. A new generation of emerging labor leaders across the country is bringing young workers together in paintball games, music festivals, trivia nights and pub crawls—all with an activist edge.

Nora Frederickson, AFL-CIO Media fellow, sends us this profile of the Oregon Young Emerging Labor Leaders program.

One week, Oregon’s young workers might be speaking out on the radio. Or they might be dishing up food at a Portland homeless shelter. They might be learning about labor history through the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center. Or they might be biking 18 miles in Portland’s only wintertime bicycle ride.