Rand Wilson

Rand Wilson has worked as a union organizer and labor communicator in the United States since the 1980s.

Wilson started in the labor movement as a member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW). While a member of Local 8-366, he led several organizing drives, was chief steward, and served on his local union's executive board.

For most of the 1980s, Rand Wilson worked as an organizer for the Communications Workers of America. In 1989 he helped coordinate solidarity efforts in Massachusetts during a successful three-month strike by 60,000 telephone workers against health care benefit cost shifting.

The strike victory helped spur the formation of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice. As the founding director in the early 1990s, Wilson spearheaded efforts in Massachusetts to support legislation for universal health care and against international trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

After returning to Boston, Rand Wilson served as Communications Director for Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 285 (later renamed Local 2020 and now part of District 1199), assisting health care workers in dozens of nursing home and hospital contract campaigns. While working for SEIU, he helped revive the Jobs with Justice Health Care Action Committee - pushing for coordinated actions by union members to link their struggles against cost shifting with the broader movement for health care reform.

In 2005 Wilson worked for the AFL-CIO's Office of Investment on a campaign to oppose the Bush Administration's plan to privatize Social Security. Wilson organized actions across the country exposing the conflict of interest created by the financial services industry's support for privatizing Social Security while it managed trillions of dollars in worker's retirement assets.

Wilson recently ran as the first (and only) candidate for a new Massachusetts Working Families Party where he received almost 20 percent of the vote for State Auditor in a successful bid to gain the party statewide ballot status.

Rand Wilson has written and lectured widely about contract campaigns, strikes, health care reform, and strategies to build workers' political power. He is president of the Center for Labor Education and Research, and on the board of directors of the ICA Group, the Local Enterprise Assistance Fund (LEAF), and the Center for the Study of Public Policy.

Currently, Wilson is organizing director at IUE-CWA Local 201, a union of General Electric and other manufacturing workers in Lynn, Massachusetts. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

External links

* [http://www.randwilson.org Wilson for Working Families] - Rand Wilson Campaign Web site

* [http://www.workingfamiliesparty.org/ Working Families Party]