July 23—Diversity is critical to a vital and growing union movement—and because unions must do more to recruit, organize and promote women and people of color, more than 800 delegates are meeting at the National Summit on Diversity July 23 to explore hand-on strategies for increasing diversity in the movement.
Co-sponsored by the AFL-CIO and the Labor Coalition for Community Action, an umbrella group for the federation’s six constituency groups, the summit is the first meeting in the two-day AFL-CIO conference on “Building Power for Working Families.” The conference continues July 24 with sessions on organizing, strengthening state and local union movements and democratizing the global economy.
Women make up 55 percent of all new workers who join unions, and people of color are 30 percent of all union members, yet both groups are underrepresented in union leadership at all levels.
‘We Need to Go Further to Make Our Movement Diverse’
“We can shake our heads, tell each other how bad things are and then stick the reports in the back of the file cabinet where no one will ever see them,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said to conference participants. “Or we can recognize the truth: We need to go a lot, lot further to make our movement as diverse and open as it can be and we need a road map that shows where we go from here.”
That road map, Sweeney said, is contained in a resolution delegates to the federation’s 25th Constitutional Convention will consider next week. Resolution 2, “A Diverse Movement Calls for Diverse Leadership,” would make the AFL-CIO a model of diversity for the entire union movement and require international unions to sign off on a set of diversity principles and report regularly on the representation of women and people of color in their membership, staff and elected positions at all levels. It also would require the AFL-CIO Executive Council and state and local central bodies develop targeted levels of leadership diversity and plan to achieve them by the 2009 Convention.
It also would require delegations to the 2009 AFL-CIO Convention to reflect the makeup of their union members, including women and people of color.
Unions Must Implement Strong Programs to Recruit, Train Diverse Leaders
The resolution is a good start, several speakers pointed out, but must be backed up by strong programs focused on recruiting women and workers of color, as well as mentoring and training programs that prepare new members for leadership.
Without such programs, the union movement loses credibility in the new workforce and is in danger of losing its moral authority to lead, Flight Attendants-CWA President Patricia Friend said in her remarks to delegates.
Other speakers included AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson and leaders of the AFL-CIO constituency groups: Coalition of Black Trade Unionists President William Lucy, A. Philip Randolph Institute Executive Director Clayola Brown, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance President Luisa Blue, Coalition of Labor Women Executive Vice President Marsha Zakowski and Jesse Rios, executive director of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement. Pride At Work Co-President Nancy Wohlforth will speak to conference participants in the afternoon session.
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