Growing up, UC Berkeley senior Luis Bocaletti said he witnessed firsthand the injustices confronting blue-collar workers. His immigrant mother, an employee of the hotel industry, received minimal benefits and was overworked and underpaid, he said.
Today, he wants to bring students into the labor movement—he was one of more than 250 students, professors and workers who came together for a three-day California Student Labor Teach-In in Barrows Hall this weekend.
“It’s always been a personal thing for me to be involved in labor, because I come from that background,” Bocaletti said. “It’s part of a collective experience, so I know there’s a lot of people who feel the way I do, whether they are from working-class or middle-class backgrounds, they strive for social justice.”
The UC Berkeley Labor Center coordinated more than 30 workshops where student activists and workers discussed strategies and local and global trends in labor, tackling topics including globalization, health care and free trade.
The focus of the conference was to rally students around political and social activism—especially pertinent in the face of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget cuts on education, which have slashed 100 percent of the funding for labor studies and outreach, said Lian Cheun, director of the Movement Activist Apprenticeship Program.
The conference’s keynote speaker was Luis Adolfo Cardona, a former Colombian Coca-Cola employee who sought political asylum in the United States. He spoke about his international campaign to boycott Coca-Cola, a corporation that he said has taken away worker’s rights through assassinations, death threats and incarcerations through false testimony.
“Just talking to him and hearing his experience in Columbia, I think that gave a sense of urgency to the conference,” said UC Berkeley graduate student Danilo Trisi.
