The national AFL-CIO will honor two elected leaders this Friday with the inaugural Wellstone Award for their outstanding support of workers’ efforts to improve their lives by forming unions. Vermont Governor Howard Dean and State Senator John Burton, President Pro Tem of the California Senate, will both be honored at a dinner Friday which is part of the AFL-CIO’s first organizing summit.

Governor Dean supported the nurses at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington -- Vermont’s largest hospital system -- when they began to form a union with the Vermont Federation of Nurses & Health Professionals (AFT) to address issues of patient care and having a voice on the job. Dean appeared with the nurses at a rally at the hospital at which he urged the hospital to honor their choice regarding a union and wrote a letter to the nurses in which he wrote, “If I were a nurse, I would vote to unionize.” Dean is a physician who trained at the hospital before becoming governor. Nurses from Fletcher Allen Health Care in Vermont will travel to Washington, DC to present Dean with the award on Friday.

State Senator Burton has been a strong advocate on behalf of California farm workers -- most of whom are immigrants and who are some of the least-paid workers in the state. Burton was a key supporter of historic legislation guaranteeing farm workers mediation in contract disputes. In nearly 60 percent of the cases in which the workers win their union election, management never agrees to a contract. The legislation which was passed in late September will help many farm workers to finally realize the promise of the 1975 farm labor law to give farm workers the freedom to form unions. United Farm Worker President and AFL-CIO Executive Council member Arturo Rodriguez will present the Wellstone Award to Burton.