On October 11, 2006, the annual Ben Aaron Labor Law Lecture was given by Jonathan Hiatt, General Counsel of the national AFL-CIO. The topic of the lecture, which was co-sponsored by the Labor and Employment Law Section of the L.A. County Bar Association, was New Perspectives on Workers’ Rights in the 21st Century.

Lecture by Jonathan Hiatt, Part 1	Part 2	Part 3	Part 4, Question & Answer

Below is a summary of Hiatt's lecture. You may also view the full text version of this video.

Unionized workers continue to earn substantially more than nonunion workers in the 21st century U.S., and also enjoy superior health coverage, pensions, and other fringe benefits- regardless of demographic group or occupational category. Moreover, unionized workers enjoy much greater protection when they exercise their voice on the job than do their non-union counterparts. The organized labor movement remains critical to a democratic society, and collective bargaining is as important to the preservation of good jobs with decent wages as ever.

But, in an era when the laws governing workers’ freedom to join unions provide so little protection, and under an Administration that consciously seeks to erode workers’ rights, new forms of worker organization have emerged alongside traditional labor unions. Among the newly burgeoning worker centers: community-base institutions that advocate for the rights of workers who typically lack union representation- rights involving immigration status, wage and hour laws and their enforcement, health and safety protections, and others.

Today, the challenges facing workers represented by both organized labor and worker centers are similar. The need to collaborate and work together to develop new strategies and take on common struggles is real. This lecture will address some of the opportunities that exist for such collaboration, and some of the initiatives that have recently been undertaken by the AFL-CIO to defend and strengthen the rights of all workers- union and non-union, immigrant and U.S.-born.