This year the organizers also decided to include an international aspect to the conference, with the most prominent black labor leader in Europe--Bill Morris--giving the keynote speech, as well as inviting representatives from South Africa, Bermudas and Canada to attend.

"I came here to get a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the African-American labor movement...I want to learn what the commonalties they have with the situation we face in South Africa," said Ravi Naidoo, Director of the National Labour and Economic Development Institute in Johannesburg.

Represented in the conference were a variety of labor leaders, from traditional unions like the AFL-CIO to groups like health care workers and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).

SAG Board Member R. Eugene Boggs '68 said groups like his--Hollywood's most famous union--is sometimes overlooked in discussions about American labor.

"Many people tend to trivialize the role of labor in the media," Boggs said. "The concentration of mass media in fewer and fewer hands leads to fewer voices being heard, especially minority-owned or viewed television stations."

Participants discussed problems faced by black labor leaders in the U.S., including what they said was a problem re-incorporating people coming out of the criminal justice system back into the economy.

"In an economy that is supposedly booming, 44 million Americans are uninsured, including one out of every five blacks," said A. Philip Randolph Institute President Norman Hill.