Arlene Holt Baker - Early Life and Union Career

Early Life and Union Career

Holt Baker was born in 1951 in Fort Worth, Texas. Her father, W.S. Leslie, was a laborer and her mother, Louise Leslie, was a domestic worker. She was one of seven children.

Holt Baker became an organizer with American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in the late 1980s. She began organizing public sector employees for the state of California, and eventually was hired as an international union staff representative. She rose to become an "area director" in California, overseeing AFSCME's collective bargaining efforts for public employee locals and leading the union's political operations for statewide and federal races.

Read more about this topic:  Arlene Holt Baker

Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life, union and/or career:

    Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...
    Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)

    We can slide it
    Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
    Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
    The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
    They call it easing the Spring.
    Henry Reed (1914–1986)

    Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
    Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)

    Every good cause gained a victory when the Union troops were triumphant. Our final victory was the triumph of religion, of virtue, of knowledge.... During those four years, whatever our motives, whatever our lives, we were fighting on God’s side. We were doing His work. What would this country have been if we had failed?
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.
    Barbara Dale (b. 1940)