July 26—Delegates to the AFL-CIO Convention approved major revisions to the federation’s political programs and new measures to strengthen state and local movements during the afternoon session of the federation’s 25th Constitutional Convention meeting in Chicago.
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| Delegates to the AFL-CIO Convention on July 26 considered numerous Convention actions key to the future of the union movement. |
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The action followed delegates’ approval during the morning session of a major increase in the resources the union movement devotes to organizing. The organizing, political and state and local measures are all part of Resolution 1, “A Plan to Help Workers Win: Uniting Our Power to Build a Stronger, Growing Labor Movement.” The comprehensive political mobilization plan received strong support from the Convention delegates.
During the debate on the Convention action, Dan Radford, executive secretary-treasurer of the Cincinnati AFL-CIO Labor Council, said that during his more than 30 years of union political action and building local union strength, he has seen “a lot of changes about how we go about our mission but we didn’t always have floor plan or a road map”—and Resolution 1 provides that missing road map.
Building Year-Round Capacity for Political Action
From March to November 2004, more than 225,000 union activists volunteered to educate and mobilize voters in the 2004 elections, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka told delegates.
“Across the country, working people have been knocking on doors, making phone calls, sending e-mails and faxes, building local union capacity, running for and winning elected offices and convincing lawmakers at every level to listen to working families. And the changes we put into place this afternoon will make us stronger still,” he said.
Several new and long-time political activists on the state and local levels accompanied Trumka on stage, including Ohio AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Petee Talley, who led the 2004 “My Vote, My Right” effort in Ohio to ensure every vote would be counted.
Talley said that even though Ohio unions began their 2004 political mobilization earlier than ever—more than a year before Election Day—and that more unions and union members took part in the union movement’s biggest election effort in the Buckeye State, “with all that we couldn’t still deliver the votes. We need a year-round political program mobilization.”
Resolution Boosts AFL-CIO Community Affiliate WORKING AMERICA
While union voters continue to turn out in record numbers, recent election results show an even larger mobilization is needed to win elections for working families—and the potential of the AFL-CIO’s 900,000-strong community affiliate, WORKING AMERICA, can boost that turnout and success, Trumka said.
Kedrin Bell, a member of WORKING AMERICA from St. Louis, Mo., who accompanied Trumka on stage, said the group also gives nonunion, working family voters a bigger voice.
“Between diapers and little league, I don’t always have time to call my congressman or senator, but WORKING AMERICA can help one voice like mine become many,” said Bell.
Boosting Union Members Skills for Political Office
Montana state Sen. Lane Larson (D) and an Electrical Workers member who received his political training from the first wave of the AFL-CIO’s program to equip union members with the skills to run for office, told delegates about the immense impact of a dedicated political mobilization with strong resources.
“We took back the [state] Senate, we’re at 50–50 in the [state] House and elected a governor. We’re looking forward to 2006 and are already mobilizing for that election,” said Larson, who also is a member of the National Labor Caucus of State Legislators. The National Labor Caucus is a bi-partisan network of union member and union-friendly state lawmakers committed to actively advancing issues working families care about in state legislatures throughout the country.
“No party or candidate is entitled to our support, our support must be earned...the only way to do that is supporting an agenda that benefits working families,” ALPA President Capt. Duane Woerth said.
Convention Action Boosts State and Local Union Movements
The Convention action’s state and local union movement provisions “are about recognizing the value of our Central Labor Councils and state federations…and it gives them the ability to deliver on the potential they have,” said Machinists President R. Thomas Buffenbarger.
Bob Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, said the Convention action gives a bigger voice to central labor councils and state federations and also sets benchmarks for the groups to meet.
“We do not fear accountability. We welcome it,” he said during the floor debate.
The Convention action's political and state and local provisions would:
- Shift from a biannual get-out-the-vote drive to a permanent year-round presence to educate and mobilize members around legislative and policy issues, and identify tens of thousands of local union coordinators to lead worksite education and mobilization.
- Develop long-range plans to expand working families’ strength to defeat anti-worker politicians, basing political goals on workers’ needs and not those of a political party or candidate and building coalitions to roll back so-called right-to-work laws, reaching out to mobilize people of color, young workers and retirees, working women, union members who are hunters and people of faith.
- Expand our new community affiliate WORKING AMERICA to 2 million members by the end of 2006 and increase the federation’s Member Mobilization Fund budget by about $7.5 million per year.
- Strengthen the union movement at the state and local levels by requiring strategic planning and budgeting by state federations and local central bodies, reconfiguring some local movements, setting and enforcing benchmarks and standards and promoting diversity in representation and full affiliation of unions at all levels.
Further, the Convention Action Would:
- Help unions devote dramatically more resources for organizing. The plan calls for creating a larger, more active cadre of supporters for organizing by training 100,000 worksite stewards by 2008 in education and mobilizing, and building coalitions with union allies and partners to push for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. The act, reintroduced in Congress in April, would strengthen protections for workers’ freedom to choose by requiring employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers signs cards authorizing union representation.
- Create a $22.5 million Strategic Organizing Fund, with up to $15 million from rebates of per capita dues to affiliates that meet high standards in changing their unions to better organize workers.
- Pursue strategies to increase union density and power by requiring affiliates to participate in newly created industry coordinating committees. The committees would develop and implement global industry strategies to support organizing and bargaining in entire industries. The federation also would revise its Article XX and XXI (internal disputes and organizing responsibility) procedures to bolster the work of the industry committees and actively encourage unions in the same or related industries to merge to solidify their power.
- Mount a major global campaign to expose the practices of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest employer and to support the United Food and Commercial Workers’ drive to protect good jobs from being destroyed by employers that use Wal-Mart’s tactics to compete.
Delegates also passed several other Convention actions, including Resolution 60, with an amendment, which calls on the AFL-CIO Executive Council to hold a special meeting as soon as possible to discuss the impact of the disaffiliation of SEIU and the Teamsters; and Resolution 53 calling for a withdraw of U.S. troops from Iraq as quickly as possible.
In addition, delegates also approved Convention actions 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 21, 22, 24, 25, 33 and 34.
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