President Hunter Rawlings, center, talks with Candlelight Award winner Morton Bahr, president of Communications Workers of America, left, and Theodore W. Kheel, president of Cornell/Foundation House Experiments in Distance Learning (EDL), at the Candlelight Award dinner in New York City, Sept. 11.
Cornell/Foundation House Experiments in Distance Learning (EDL) has awarded the CEO's of AT&T and Lucent Technologies and two union presidents with the Candlelight Award for their role in creating a cooperative collective bargaining venture that has increased employee satisfaction and productivity.
The Candlelight Award, presented at a dinner in New York City on Sept. 11, honors those who "would rather light a candle than curse the darkness."
President Hunter Rawlings, who serves as EDL's chairman, presented the Candlelight Award to Robert Allen, chairman of AT&T; Harry Schacht, chairman and chief executive officer of Lucent Technologies; Morton Bahr, president of Communications Workers of America; and Jack Barry, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, for their cooperation in creating the Alliance for Employee Growth and Development. Patricia Russo, executive vice president and chief staff officer of Lucent Technologies, accepted the award on behalf of Schacht, and Vincent O'Reilly, senior executive assistant to the president, accepted on behalf of Barry.
Theodore W. Kheel, president of EDL and long-time labor mediator, applauded the Alliance for Employee Growth and Development as a product of collective bargaining. "The alliance is a model other companies and unions should seek to emulate," Kheel said.
The alliance, created in 1986, supports individual efforts to develop career and personal growth and enhance employability through continuous learning experiences. The alliance targets career and personal development and training programs for more than 88,000 eligible workers at AT&T and Lucent work sites nationwide.
Earlier in the day, directors and special advisers of EDL, a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding ways to use communications technologies to improve the quality of education for all students, met for the first time since the organization was established in May. In their meeting, directors and advisers approved a collaboration agreement with the Cornell Theory Center to conduct experiments in distance learning at the New York Information Technology Center at 55 Broad Street in Manhattan and to join in support of Cornell's statewide economic development mission.