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Flor is the Executive Director of the CLEAN Carwash Worker Center who has successfully led the transformation from an organizational community campaign into the CLEAN Carwash Worker Center. Flor joined CLEAN as a Community Organizer in 2012 and rapidly transitioned to lead the Campaign’s efforts to institute the new Carwash Worker Center in 2013. Prior to CLEAN, Flor worked at the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California-IDEPSCA in 2006 in the Day Laborer Program. She performed community outreach to businesses around the day laborer movement. Eventually, she became the overall Program Manager for IDEPSCA’s six Day Laborer Centers.
Flor immigrated from Durango, Mexico, and has lived in Los Angeles since 1992. She is the daughter of immigrant workers and the eldest of two siblings. In her free time, she likes to travel with her husband and son.
Erik Forman is hard at work on a portfolio of system-change initiatives applying worker ownership as a strategy in a range of sectors. He is currently co-leading the launch of The Drivers Cooperative, a driver-owned rideshare platform and purchasing co-op and supporting the creation of a new community- and worker-owned Internet Service Provider led by the Spectrum Strikers in New York City, with other projects in the pipeline. For Erik, a focus on worker ownership is the next step in a 15-year journey of heading upstream to solve problems facing workers: from a start leading groundbreaking union activism in the U.S. fast food industry before the Fight for $15 as a salt at Starbucks and Jimmy John’s for six years with the IWW, to conducting organizer trainings and consulting for unions across the world, research as a Practitioner Fellow at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, launching the first national labor movement-based support organization for prison strikes, social justice unionism as a high school teacher and UFT Chapter Leader in the Bronx, creating innovative programs to organize Uber and Lyft with the Independent Drivers Guild (IAMAW), and other initiatives.
Erik is pursuing a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he leads the Systems Change Research Collaborative. He teaches at the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies at SUNY Empire State College and Fordham University. And he tweets at @_erikforman.
Lela Klein is the co-founder and executive director of Co-op Dayton, an incubator for worker-owned businesses that broaden economic opportunities and strengthen blue-collar communities. Lela has spent her career in movements for economic justice and equity for working people. As an organizer in the labor movement, Lela participated in domestic and international campaigns, gaining experience with democratic, worker-led organizations. Prior to co-founding Co-op Dayton, she was general counsel of the IUE-CWA, a 45,000-member manufacturing union, where she led major strategic projects, advocated on behalf of working people, and created a mentorship program to foster leadership among young manufacturing employees.
Lela was also an organizer and, later, an attorney with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). After witnessing the destructive impact of the 2008 global recession on American workers, Lela returned to her hometown of Dayton, Ohio in 2012 to use her legal and organizing training to build innovative, worker-centered solutions. Now in its fifth year, Co-op Dayton has developed impactful projects such as the Gem City Market, a worker-and community-owned grocery store, and 937Delivers, a driver- and restaurant-owned delivery service, and has cooperatives in development in the agriculture, construction, logistics, retail, and domestic sectors.