In Memoriam: Bonnie Ladin, National Labor College Professor And Union Organizer, Dies At 59

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

Bonnie Ladin (at left), 59, a professor at the National Labor College (NLC) who discovered her passion for workers' rights as a member of a bakers' union in the 1970s and went on to become a leading organizer with the Service Employees International Union, died August 25 at her home in Rockville, reported The Washington Post. She had cancer. Ladin worked for SEIU for more than 20 years before joining the NLC in Silver Spring in 2001, teaching courses on organizing tactics and leadership skills. At SEIU, Ladin was the organizing director of District 925, a union of mostly female clerical workers. Bonnie Lou Ladin spent two years in New York as an AmeriCorps volunteer, working on welfare rights before deciding she wanted to be a baker. Working at a Safeway bakery in San Francisco in the late 1970s, Ladin realized that she could combine her passions for bakery work and social activism as a union member, spurring her decision to become a labor organizer. Survivors include her husband of 26 years, Joseph Hansen of Rockville, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Click here for the Post’s full obituary, by T. Rees Shapiro. – photo: Bonnie Ladin and husband Joseph Hansen, president of UCFW International (Family Photo)