Susan Burke’s article on stress for pilots won ILCA’s top prize for labor journalism.

Labor journalists from across the country, members of the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA), today celebrated working people’s victories on Election Day and discussed ways to build on the enthusiasm and commitment shown during the 2008 election.

Meeting at AFL-CIO here in Washington, D.C., members of the organization also recognized their peers who made outstanding contributions to labor journalism in the past year. The ILCA presented its top prize, the Max Steinbock Award to Susan Burke for her article, “When Your Mental State Cries ‘Mayday,’ Your Union Stands By You” in the Air Line Pilot magazine, published by the Air Line Pilots (ALPA).  

The article describes the efforts of ALPA’s Human Performance Structure to help members deal with the extreme stress they have been experiencing since Sept. 11 and the added pressures of contract devaluations, bankruptcies, fatigue, lack of respect from management and a host of other workplace struggles. Click here to read Burke’s winning article and here for a complete list of all the winners. 

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker praised the labor journalists as “the unsung heroes of our labor movement,” and particularly pointed out the role that the labor press played in the 2008 election.   

The numbers tell only a part of the story. The work I saw across the country as I traveled was an inspiration and a hopeful indicator of what we will be able to do in the days to come. I saw working people taking the future of our country into their own hands. The work you did was a major, major factor in getting us where we are.

 [The ILCA awards] are a recognition of the vital role you play in communicating with our members, giving them the unvarnished truth about the great issues facing us as well as the challenges facing the labor movement and we know that so often you do it under tough circumstances. 

Holt Baker told the more than 200 participants that the heart of our nation’s economic recovery is the Employee Free Choice Act.   

We know that whatever else we are able to achieve, we won’t create economic growth that is broadly shared unless we restore the freedom of working people to make their own decision to join a union and bargain with their employers for better wages and benefits for a better future for their children and the next generation. The centerpiece is passing the Employee Free Choice Act, which will make it easier for workers to join our unions, while making it harder for employers to interfere with the freedom of workers to organize. This is key to rebuilding the middle class. 

To better deliver the message to working people about the Employee Free Choice Act, the labor journalists also hosted a panel of key organizing and communications staff to discuss the best techniques to mobilize support for the bill. The panel included Ken Zinn, director of the AFL-CIO Organizing Department’s Center for Strategic Research; Bob Callahan, Change to Win’s Employee Free Choice Act campaign director; and Liz Cattaneo, communications director for American Rights at Work