JwJ’s Granich wins national honor alongside AFL-CIO Pres. Trumka

Washington, D.C. – Lara Granich, veteran director of Missouri Jobs with Justice, was honored recently alongside AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka by the National Consumer League (NCL) for her commitment to workers’ welfare. The NCL is the nation’s pioneering consumer and worker advocacy organization.

The awards:

• Lara Granich: Florence Kelley Consumer Leadership Award, named for NCL’s early leader and awarded to grassroots consumer advocates.

• Richard Trumka: Trumpeter Award, NCL’s highest honor, given to leaders who have dedicated their lives to improving the rights of consumers and workers.

“President Trumka fully embodies these values, as his career-long commitment to America’s families have had a measurable impact on conditions for our workforce,” said NCL Executive Director Sally Greenberg. “We are proud of NCL’s historical and modern-day ties to the labor community and look forward to working together to increase workplace protections for all Americans.

“In her time at Missouri Jobs with Justice, Granich (who also co-chairs the Jobs with Justice National Board) has helped lead successful campaigns to increase the minimum wage, defend affirmative action, and support workers organizing unions and bargaining for better lives at work,” Greenberg said.

In accepting the award, Granich, true to form, highlighted the efforts of others in St. Louis in the fight for equality in the workplace: fast food workers, care givers and community members who continue to participate in the “walkback” campaign to ensure striking fast food workers are not subjected to retaliation.

CHALLENGE TO ALL

Granich offered a challenge to all when she said, “…This is a time when we need our unity more than ever, unity to meet the challenge of an aging workforce, the challenge of historic economic inequality, the challenge of an economy that now has more than a third of our workers in some form of contingent employment

“In all of this we are challenged to find ways for families to have the kind of peace and economic security that allows our economy to thrive for all of us, consumers, workers and businesses alike.”