Delegates focused on shared prosperity, good jobs and raising wages, as the AFL-CIO 2013 Convention entered its third day in Los Angeles. 

The three working family economics resolutions that won approval this morning center on the labor movement’s vision of shared prosperity here and around the globe, the steps needed to create good jobs, economic security and tax fairness and three dozen specific actions to raise wages and put more money into workers’ pockets.

A safe job is a fundamental workers' right. It doesn't matter whether you work in a coal mine, a classroom, a construction site, a hospital or a garment factory in Bangladesh or China, every worker should be able to go to their job and return home safely at the end of the day. 

AFL-CIO delegates took on other initiatives by passing the following resolutions at the AFL-CIO Convention in Los Angeles today.

A central theme of this year’s convention is building a broader, more inclusive labor movement to better support all workers, both union and nonunion. As attendees of the action session “Anyone Can Join and Everyone Should: Models for Alternative Membership” learned this afternoon, associate membership can be a powerful tool to achieve that goal.

While President Obama had to stay in Washington, D.C., to address the situation in Syria, he sent a video message to the convention attendees, thanking them for their hard work and reiterating his support for unions and working families. Watch the video in the post. 

The term “banana scanner” sticks in Jackie Gitmed’s throat. It’s what she and other members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 770 were called during the strike and lockout nearly 10 years ago.

“They said we were ignorant and overpaid and didn’t deserve any better,” Gitmed says, as she and three friends, all of Local 770, first drew and then painted a life-size image of a grocery bagger on cardboard in one of the Monday action sessions at the 2013 AFL-CIO Convention in Los Angeles.

If Texas working families and their unions are going to turn red, right-wing, "right to work" for less Texas blue and replace the corporate-beholden, anti-union politicians with lawmakers who will respect the rights of workers, "We'll have to do it one [state] House district at a time," Richard Shaw, secretary-treasurer of the Harris County (Texas) AFL-CIO Council, told participants at the Winning for Texas Workers action session at the AFL-CIO 2013 Convention this afternoon.

What turns young people into labor activists? How do we use their ideas and energy to transform our work? Why is it important to develop young leaders? What are the dos and don’ts when engaging young workers in organizing and political action? And how do we adapt our strategies, partnerships and attitudes to meet young people where they’re at?

Today, the AFL-CIO came out strongly in favor of reforms to the U.S. prison system that would have significant benefits to communities, people of color, correctional employees and inmates who are trying to reform their lives and rejoin society. In particular, the federation criticized the privatized prison industry that, in the name of bigger corporate profits, mistreats workers, creates inhumane conditions for prisoners and incentivizes the incarceration of more and more of America's citizens in order to make the wealthiest Americans more profits.

The years-long assault on workers’ and voting rights at state and national levels by corporate special interests and their political allies means, says a resolution on political action approved this afternoon by delegates to the AFL-CIO 2013 Convention:

It is crucial that our political action maximize the potential for workers to organize and bargain collectively.