To be held at Kentucky Dam Village State Resort Park

Contact:  Tom Cannady 502-564-3070

GILBERTSVILLE, Ky. (Sept. 6, 2006) – An expert on workplace issues between employers and workers will be the featured speaker at the 29th Kentucky Labor-Management Conference, Sept. 12-14 at Kentucky Dam Village State Resort Park.

Dr. William Cooke is a professor and director of the Douglas A. Fraser Center for Workplace Issues at Wayne State University. He also directs the Labor-Management Relations Center at the Executive Education Center, University of Michigan. Cooke, who has a doctorate from the University of Illinois, has been an associate professor of business at the University of Michigan and Purdue University and a visiting scholar at Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley. 

Cooke will deliver the keynote address Tuesday morning, Sept.12, at an opening general session. Also scheduled to speak are LaJuana S. Wilcher, secretary of the Environmental and Public Protection Cabinet (EPPC), and Gene Strong, secretary of the Cabinet for Economic Development.

A banquet will be held on Wednesday night, Sept.13, to honor two leaders of labor and management – Billy Thompson, District 8 director, United Steel Workers, and George Rooker, human resource manager, Calgon Carbon Corp.

Thompson has been a district director since 1997. His district includes Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Rooker has held his position since 1999 and is management co-chair of the Ashland Area Labor-Management Committee.

On Wednesday the program’s focus will be on emerging issues affecting labor-management relations. Featured speakers will be:

• Karen Engle, executive director, Operation UNITE (Unlawful Narcotics Investigations, Treatment and Education), addressing substance abuse and the workplace.
• Mary Ellen Harned, executive director of GuardiaCare Services, a nonprofit agency serving older adults in the Louisville community.  She will highlight personal challenges created for workers and companies, including absenteeism and decreased productivity, in caring for older family members.
• Herbert L. Segal, founding partner, Segal, Lindsay & Janes law firm. He will provide information and instruction related to implementation of the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The conference is hosted by the Labor-Management Conference Board of Directors, composed of business and labor representatives; EPPC and its agency, the Kentucky Department of Labor; and the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development.

From its beginning as a golf tournament in 1977, the conference has evolved into an annual forum in which labor and management officials accustomed to facing one another across a negotiation table can come together to explore issues and ideas for fostering positive relationships.

Also to be presented at the awards banquet will be up to $4,000 in scholarships to students aspiring to careers in labor-management relations. Using its own budget, the conference board appropriated funds for the scholarships in June.

For additional information, contact Tom Cannady, Kentucky Department of Labor, at 502-564-3070.