Today, the following action sessions are taking place from 12:30–2 p.m. PDT. Check out the schedule below, and don't forget to live-tweet using the hashtag #aflcio13:

Bankrupting Retirement: Retirement Security and Bankruptcy as an Employer Strategy

Room 408-A

Participants in this session will learn how bankruptcy is being used as a weapon in the assault on pensions and retirement security and how workers and their unions can fight back. This session will draw on the experience of unions in the private and public sectors, at companies like Patriot Coal and in cities such as Detroit, and lay out how campaigns, the courts and Congress can be used to protect workers and retirees. Participants also will explore the connection between employers’ use of bankruptcy and the broader attack on retirement security and the importance of winning retirement security for all.

Moderators: Damon Silvers and Brandon Rees, AFL-CIO

Speakers:
• Larry Roehrig, Secretary-Treasurer, AFSCME Council 25, and International Vice President
• Grant Crandall, General Counsel, UMWA
• David Jury, Associate General Counsel, USW
• Robert Roach Jr., Secretary-Treasurer, IAM (invited)

Bargain Like an Organizer: Developing and Executing Strategic Contract Campaigns

Room 406-B

Employers have become more aggressive and confrontational in renegotiating existing agreements, often necessitating costly and time-consuming defensive fight backs. For unions, it has become more crucial than ever to bargain behind an offensive strategic plan that expands the scope of the campaign and the victory. This session covers the building blocks of waging successful contract campaigns, including advanced planning, strategic research, member mobilization, community alliances and more.

Moderator: Gordon Pavy, Collective Bargaining Director, AFL-CIO (retired)

Speakers:
• Matt Luskin, Organizer, Chicago Teachers Union, AFT
• Additional affiliates involved in strategic contract campaigns

Building Coalitions for Job Creation: Public Transit

Room 308-A/B

Public transportation creates a community space that unites the interests of diverse groups of people. Around the country workers and riders are fighting side by side to provide reliable and affordable public transportation service. This action session will offer a forum for unions and allies to discuss what works and what doesn’t when communities unite to form campaigns to improve public transportation. The panelists will discuss their efforts to increase public funding for transit, improve service, create good jobs and ensure that the interests of riders and workers are considered by public officials. Participants will offer their perspectives from building alliances that include the labor movement, community organizations, faith-based groups, middle- and working-class people, seniors, people with disabilities and employers.

Moderator: Brendan Danaher, Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO

Speakers:
• Darlene Lombos, Executive Director, Community Labor United in Boston
• Cynthia Jarrold, Federal Policy Coordinator for the Gamaliel National Campaigns, Transportation Equity Network
• Representative of ATU
• Representative of Colorado FRESC
• Representative of TWU

Building Labor-Community Partnerships at State Federations and Central/Area Labor Councils

Room 405

Three case studies will illustrate the role of labor participating in and building community labor alliances with nonprofit advocacy organizations and combinations. Issues these alliances addressed include economic development, political education and action (electoral, voter registration and candidate recruitment), research, union organizing, community housing and education development, school funding and specific community building such as supermarkets vs. Walmart. Presenters will address labor’s role as a convener, coalition partner (the good, the bad and the ugly) and resource provider and cover specific union involvement, use of political clout and perceptions and realities of labor’s role in these initiatives and community outreach.

Moderator: Richard Shaw, Secretary-Treasurer, Harris County (Texas) AFL-CIO Council

Speakers:
• Richard Barrera, Secretary-Treasurer, San Diego and Imperial Counties (Calif.) Labor Council
• Jeff Crosby, President, North Shore (Mass.) Labor Council
• Charlie Wowkanech, President, New Jersey State AFL-CIO

Common Sense Economics: Mass Education for a Mass Movement

Room 403-A

Join us for an interactive session on a new module from the Common Sense Economics curriculum. As part of this year’s Convention we will be rolling out an updated curriculum and we need your input! We need your feedback on what is needed to develop a full program and implement it with hundreds of thousands of workers, students and community partners. The new curriculum will have both online and classroom components that will include, among other issues, a focus on economic issues that impact younger workers, women and people of color.

Moderator: Al Davidoff, Director of Governance, Organizational and Leadership Development, Campaigns Department, AFL-CIO

Speakers:
• Sarita Gupta, Executive Director, Jobs with Justice
• Chris Michalakas, President, Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO
• Monica Bielski Boris, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Facebook 101: Getting Started

Boots Online Digital Booth

If Facebook was a physical location, it would be the third biggest country in the world. If you or your organization aren’t on Facebook, you may be missing out on a great way to tell the story of your work and our movement. Our social media expert will tailor this session for people who are just getting started. We’ll walk through step by step how you create a Facebook account and give you some tips to start loving social media.

Speaker:
• Jackie Tortora, Blog Editor/Social Media Manager, AFL-CIO

Global Organizing Partnerships: U.S. Unions and International Partners Organizing in the Global Economy

Room 306-A/B

This workshop will examine practical ways in which U.S. unions are jointly taking on the challenge of organizing workers employed by multinational corporations. Through presentations by the Solidarity Center and three case examples from current affiliate campaigns, participants will gain information on strategies and approaches to building power for workers employed by global corporations, tools and tactics and resources available to carry out campaigns. The case examples to be discussed will highlight innovative partnerships and will include presentations by union leadership and rank-and-file activists involved in the campaigns. Case studies will include the CWA-ver.di partnership to build TU, the union for T-Mobile workers; the USW long-term strategy of building toward a merger with the National Union of Metal and Mine Workers of the Republic of Mexico (SNTMMSRM or Mineros); and the UNITE HERE strategic hotel sector campaign in the Accor hotel chain.

Moderator: Sarah McKenzie, Trade Union Strengthening Director, AFL-CIO Solidarity Center

Speakers:
• Larry Cohen, President, CWA
• Joshua Coleman, TU-CWA
• Ben Davis, International Affairs Director, USW
• Debbie Anderson, Director of International Affairs Department, UNITE HERE

Harnessing History: Innovative Responses to a Changing Capitalism

Room 406-A

In an age of corporate-driven globalization, austerity and attacks on unions, it often seems like workers today face insurmountable challenges. Yet today’s workers aren’t the first to feel all around them the effects of massive changes in capitalism. Labor history offers lessons in how workers tried to win power over their workplaces and lives in transformational times. Sometimes they won and sometimes they lost, and their histories offer powerful ideas and inspiration to workers and leaders who want to effect change today. This roundtable brings together a number of labor historians and practitioners to discuss three different times workers have faced shifting capitalism and to explore their innovative approaches. We’ll cover not only the history of labor institutions, but also broader worker and community solidarity efforts.

Speakers:
• Dan Katz, Dean of Labor Studies, National Labor College
• Heather Thompson, Professor, Temple University
• Lane Windham, Ph.D. candidate, University of Maryland

‘Inequality for All’: Sneak Preview Film Screening and Discussion

Solidarity Stage 2

The feature film “Inequality for All” explores the causes and consequences of the widening income gap in America and asks what it means for the future of our economy and our nation. Featuring Robert Reich as its narrator, the film had its world premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and is being released in theaters around the county on Sept. 27. This session will preview the film, provide a chance for discussion and let folks know about ways to use local showings as organizing events.

Moderators:
• Wendy Cohen
• Sebastian Dungan, Producer

Jobs to Move America: National Partnership to Boost U.S. Manufacturing and Create Good Jobs in the Transportation Industry

Room 408-B

Over the past year, TTD and the AFL-CIO have supported Los Angeles-based LAANE in its development of a national, community-based operation designed to create jobs and economic activity through transportation manufacturing. LAANE has developed—in partnership with economists, community development and advocacy groups, veterans’ groups and labor—a U.S. employment plan that enables transit agencies to offer manufacturers a voluntary incentive designed to reward companies that commit to re-shore manufacturing and spur good American jobs, creating access and opportunities for disadvantaged people and small businesses. This session will involve a brief overview of the work done on the U.S. Employment Plan, followed by a discussion on the intersection of policy and politics in implementing this plan with specific procurements going forward. The discussion will focus on how political leverage, through a shared strategy with LAANE and its partners, will be effective in implementing sound procurement policy and advancing job and organizing opportunities.

Moderator: Elizabeth Bunn, Director, Organizing Department, AFL-CIO

Speakers:
• Madeline Janis, National Policy Director, LAANE
• Jorge Ramirez, President, Chicago Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO
• Ed Wytkind, Executive Director, TTD

Labor Law for the Modern Economy: Past Challenges, Future Strategy

Room 404-A

This action session will give participants the tools to explain why fundamental reform of our nation’s labor laws is essential to the continued existence of vibrant labor organizations. It will explore the failures of the current laws and examine past efforts at reform and why they failed. Participants will leave the session better prepared to build the broad coalition that will achieve such reform.

Speakers:
• Craig Becker, General Counsel, AFL-CIO
• Bill Samuel, Director of Government Affairs, AFL-CIO
• Pastor Bridie Roberts, CLUE LA
• Liz McElroy, Secretary-Treasurer, Philadelphia Council of the AFL-CIO

No Workplace? No Problem! Building the Union Movement in the New Economy

Solidarity Stage 1

This interactive panel discussion will address the pervasive challenges unions face as traditional workplaces and work schemes shift beyond the factory wall and beyond the traditional employer/employee relationship. The action session will examine and highlight dynamic and creative organizing success stories of workers in nontraditional workplaces under nontraditional work schemes such as subcontracted, temporary, independent provider, outsourced or other forms of contingent employment. Participants and panelists will draw out best practices from the session to better equip the labor movement with the tools to organize in the new economy.

Moderator: Tom Egan, Senior Program Officer, Trade Union Strengthening, AFL-CIO Solidarity Center

Speakers:
• Justin Molito, Director of Organizing, WGAE
• Janice Fine, Associate Professor, Rutgers University
• Doug Moore, Executive Director, United Domestic Workers, AFSCME
• Johanna Hester, Director of Organizing and Field Services, United Domestic Workers, AFSCME

OUR Walmart: Change Jobs, Change Retail and Change the World!

Room 402-B

In this workshop, organizers will lead a discussion about the key lessons from the OUR Walmart campaign’s worker-centered organizing. Raising standards for retail workers worldwide requires raising the standards of the largest retail employer in the world, Walmart. Participants in this brainstorming and fact-finding workshop will learn more about Walmart, OUR Walmart and how the campaign’s approach can be applied to other organizing. Explore creative ways workers can organize around issue-based fights, moving to action on a larger scale.

Speakers:
• Andrea Dehlendorf, Making Change at Walmart
• Eddie Iny, Making Change at Walmart
• Walmart Workers, Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart)

Policy Initiatives That Enable Organizing: Living Wage and PLA Campaigns

Room 402-A

Many cities have passed laws ensuring worker standards not only for government workers but in targeted industry sectors. These laws raise the floor for nonunion workers and create opportunities for new organizing. Southern California has seen a number of these efforts, and the hotel workers and building trades have been leaders. UNITE HERE has fought and won six living wage campaigns, and currently is running a campaign for a $15 living wage for hotel workers in Los Angeles. The building trades have won campaigns for project labor agreements totaling more than $13 billion worth of work in Los Angeles County alone. Leaders and workers from unions will talk about lessons learned and how they’ve gained community and political support to win.

Moderator and Speaker: James Elmendorf, Deputy Director, LAANE

Speakers:
• Derek Smith, Political Director, UNITE HERE
• Uyen Le, Outreach and Compliance Officer, IBEW Local 11
• Alton Wilkerson, member, IBEW Local 11

Union Veterans, You’ve Served Your Country: Make Your Voice Heard!

Room 404-B

This session is for veterans, members of military families and all who would like to learn more about the issues facing veterans in today’s workforce. Representatives from the Vietnam Veterans of America, Helmets to Hardhats, VoteVets and the AFL-CIO’s Union Veterans Council will discuss how as union members we can be powerful advocates to improve the lives of veterans and their families. The session will be informative and will include a question-and-answer period for delegates and guests. If you are a veteran or someone you care about is a veteran, please join us.

Moderator: James Gilbert, Director, Union Veterans Council, AFL-CIO

Speakers:
• Darrell Roberts, Executive Director, Helmets to Hardhats
• Jon Soltz, Chairman, VoteVets
• John Rowan, President, Vietnam Vets of America

Winning and Building Over Time: Winning in California and You Can, Too

Room 403-B

Learning from defeats and a long string of Republican governors, the California Labor Federation formed a Strategic Planning Committee in 2005. Since then, campaign cooperation and accountability among unions have dramatically increased, and election victories have increased, too—including the defeat of several well-funded (by Koch brothers and others) anti-union initiatives. In addition to the massive campaign to Defeat Prop 32, labor also helped win a progressive tax measure, two-thirds legislative majorities and four new Democratic seats in Congress. Leaders will present on how the Strategic Planning Committee process has helped build labor’s political power, including challenges and lessons learned.

Moderator and Speaker: María Elena Durazo, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor

Speakers:
• Lou Paulson, President, California Professional Firefighters, IAFF
• Willie Pelote, California Political/Legislative Director, AFSCME
• Jim Araby, Executive Director, UFCW Western States
• Art Pulaski, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, California Labor Federation
• Tim Paulson, Executive Director, San Francisco Labor Council