December 7, 2006
The 40th Annual Cushing Gavin Awards
"The Labor Guild is pleased to present the 2006 Cushing Gavin Award to the dedicated, versatile attorney, Ira Sills.
"The 2006 Labor Attorney Award goes to this passionate and broad-gauged lawyer, able to serve very diverse clients ranging from low wage, largely immigrant custodians and security workers to skilled electrical workers and professional entertainers and artists. All of them tesitfy to Ira Sills' gifts, not only as a shrewd negotiator and incisive advocate in court and arbitration hearings, but also skilled and generous in working alongside them in fashioning strategies that well advance their organizational goals. Our recipient interrupted his graduate studies in Medieval History for a brief foray into community organizing. It changed his life, leading him to a career in labor law and equipping him with a combination of idealism and clear-eyed realism that would mark his labor law career. It even equipped him to serve for many years as the quasi "business manager" of AFTRA/SAG.
"Counterbalancing his love for the hurly-burly of collective bargaining has been his love for the classroom and the opportunity to share legal scholarship with hundreds of future law students at Northeastern Law School over the past twenty years. It also prompted him to devote a decade of teaching rank and file workers the rudiments of labor law and organizing in the Labor Guild's Evening School." |
