in order to be a good leader you got to teach most healthcare workers are women people of colors we should have the same right to have safe work environment Shirley wear was a great leader she was a Visionary she was a Trailblazer I met Shirley wear when uh she was initially running for office uh back in 1988 at that time there weren't that many um black folks and there really weren't that many black women in leadership and particularly not that many black women who had actually come up from the
floor to leadership her vision for the local was really about empowering members her Legacy is that bulldozer effect of barriers like just tear them down but also she was a mentor and she lifted as she climbed and she really LED that way for the rest of us to be able to stand up and say I'm a woman I can fight I can move I can organize I can get students in and get them into a union job and that's where the Shirley Weare education center came from and that thought of what can we do well let's h
ave a school so the Shirley Weare education are started as a partnership with SEIU and the City of Oakland helping to have Oakland Community members move into nursing home positions I think what surely understood is that there was a need within the community the community around us that folks are lacking opportunity lacking resources right the fruition of the work between the education fund and Kaiser Permanente has resulted in several training programs we're dealing with a healthcare worker sho
rtage in this country so an organization that can actually take and flip existing staff leverage them into better jobs makes them more competitive and we know that a higher engaged Workforce is a more productive Workforce when people move into a new job their average wage increase is 48% we know we have a 50% reduction in turnover for people who participate in our programs compared to those who don't so what started with a few hundred people in Oakland became 20,000 students a year so Shirley wo
uld that was like her passion put the pieces there to empower the members so that they then have connection to the union they will teach their children those children will become healthcare workers and they will be a part of the union and it will continue to grow as long as we continue to educate train teach Mentor grow surely would always push you to be thoughtful about what you're saying and what you're doing and you know she put her arm around you when she was doing it her core values were re
ally about building a strong union and she's seen education as one of those Pathways to help build a strong union that it would connect the members with the Union because the union was the driving force behind the the education path that they had taken I want to see stewards and rank and five members and younger people get involved in the labor movement I think that's is how we going to change change what happened in this country I mean we see the spark right we see the the TR blazing work that
she has done that really created the foundation for us to be able to have these type of career pathway programs Shirley had the ability to bring all of her experiences right her professional experience her personal experience all the things that she knew to the moment that was in front of her um and it didn't matter if she was talking to a lot of folks or just talking to you and I think that that was one of the the the beauties of her was she could connect with anyone and that connection was a b
ig part of her power she was able to come in own the show um know what you want to see happen have that vision and really drive that Vision Without apology I think what Shirley wear made us feel like is that we can do it it really helps empower the rest of us to say if she can do it so can I like she made everybody feel that way um and I think that was when you think about it that amalgam of things that's really sure we
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