**PRESS RELEASE**
For Immediate Release:
Saturday, June 24, 2006Contact:
Matt Losak, 301-431-5453FORMER VIRGINIA GOVERNOR MARK R. WARNER EXHORTS LABOR COLLEGE GRADUATES, UNION LEADERS TO KEEP FOCUS ON EDUCATION
Silver Spring, Md.-Former Virginia Governor Mark R. Warner urged more than 1,000 union members, leaders and working families to keep investing in labor education as a way to strengthen the labor movement in challenging times. Warner gave the commencement address at the National Labor College’s 8th annual graduation exercises held at it Silver Spring, Maryland campus today. Warner was joined by AFL-CIO President and NLC Board of Trustees Chairman John Sweeney, NLC President Susan J. Schurman, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson, among other labor leaders.
“Our world is changing at Internet speed,” said Warner. “The way we do business, the way we educate our children—and our adults, the way we care for the sick, the way we protect our people, the way we govern… the very nature of our communities. The great question of our time is what will become of this change? Will it lift America to new heights of progress and prosperity? Or will it eclipse so much of what we’ve achieved? Will it bring that fair shot to new generations of Americans? Or will that fair shot become the property of the privileged few? There are two ways to look at this change. We can be fearful. Or we can look forward together.”
In recent years, the AFL-CIO has invested significantly in the NLC in order to offer union members access to higher education tailored especially for union members and working families. The NLC is in the final stages of a campus expansion and refurbishment to make room for increased enrollment and labor conferencing. The Lane Kirkland Center, expected to be completed this fall, will house state-of-the-art computer learning facilities, meeting rooms and an 8,000 square foot plenary room. In addition, the NLC is implementing a nationwide system of articulation agreements with union training programs and community colleges that will promote access to higher education to thousands of workers in professional and technical trades.
“Here on our campus, all of the other issues that sometimes divide us by occupation, or sector or geography or strategy are set aside,” said Sweeney. “Here we focus on what we all have in common: a deep desire to build a better future for working families everywhere in the world.”
The NLC issued bachelors diplomas to 107 undergraduates in the areas of Labor Studies, Union Administration and Leadership, Labor Education, Labor History, Labor Safety and Health, and the Political Economy of Labor and 16 graduate degrees in areas of Organizational Development, Legal and Ethical Studies and Public Administration through the college’s partnerships with American University and the University of Baltimore.
“It is a very exciting time in the NLC’s history,” said Susan J. Schurman, NLC president. The NLC has created an innovative worker-friendly curriculum and restored a campus now poised to strengthen union leadership, increase the value of workers on the job and help workers everywhere earn a Bachelors degree, which, in my view, has become as essential today as a high school diploma used to be.”
The National Labor College is the only college in the world exclusively dedicated to educating union members, leaders, activists and staff. Originally founded in 1969 as the George Meany Center for Labor Studies, the center became the NLC in 1997 offering upper level degree completion programs for union members seeking to finish their college education. The NLC offers a unique combination of fully online courses and programs along with partially online program with a low-residence on-campus component that allow full-time workers with families maximum flexibility to schedule study time.
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