This Sunday, Meredith Place and Nora Gimpel will be speaking on “Labor Day: More Than Just a Day Off Work”.

 

Meredith Place (Portage, MI):  Meredith is a proud union advocate who has been committed to the labor movement since graduating college. She began her career in Washington, DC as Regional Field Coordinator for the National Association of Letter Carriers. Her job sent her across the Midwest fighting on behalf of working families. While working with Michigan AFL-CIO’s political campaign in 2012, she met her now husband, John Taylor.  A couple years later, she moved to Michigan and began organizing with the Graduate Employees Union (GEU) AFT #6196 at Michigan State University. At GEU she helped negotiate a new contract with MSU and increased their membership by over ten percent. Meredith currently works for the Clerical-Technical Union of Michigan State University as their Contract Administrator.

 

 Nora Gimpel (Kalamazoo, MI): Nora got her start in labor organizing as a Political Organizer for the American Federation of Teachers in 2014, working with union members at Western Michigan University to elect labor friendly candidates endorsed by AFT Michigan. She then worked as an organizer for the Graduate Employees Union AFT #6196 at Michigan State University before coming back to WMU. For the past two years, she has worked as the Lead Staff Organizer for the Teaching Assistants Union AFT #1729 at Western. Nora is now working as the AFT Kalamazoo Regional Lead Internal & Political Organizer for the Professional Instructors Organization, the Teaching Assistants Union and the Kalamazoo Valley Federation of Teachers, all three of the AFT Michigan Higher Ed locals in the Kalamazoo region.