On behalf of the members of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, I bring you greetings, and no one would be more proud of what we are doing here today than A. Philip Randolph, a pioneer within labor for inclusion.

Brothers and Sisters, it is beautiful to stand here and see us  together – women, people of color, gays, lesbians and all workers in our labor movement who support equality and inclusion.

Although we may be underrepresented at the highest levels of leadership, we are a force to be reckoned with.

The face of America has changed and so has the American workforce. Diversity matters now more than ever, inclusion matters.

But before I go on, I would like to take the time to recognize, on behalf of the AFL-CIO constituency groups, the work of the AFL-CIO Department of Civil, Human and Women’s Rights. It is the work of the Department of Civil, Human and Women’s Rights year after year that has gotten us here. The department works full time to advance our issues, advances our leaders, and advances our constituency groups. I would also like to acknowledge the tremendous contributions of our affiliate civil rights directors and designees and our affiliate women’s representatives, who do so much to advance our issues and concerns. Thank you on behalf of all of us. 

I  come  before you today to discuss the agenda for inclusion that we as constituency groups want to advance. Under the umbrella of the Labor Coalition of Community Action, we came together in Los Angeles last January during the Martin Luther King Jr. conference to help bring about this conference. We issued a unity statement at that conference that set forth our agenda for change. It had five central points covering full participation, organizing, legislative and political action, civil, human and women’s rights and globalization. Let me summarize this agenda: 

First, the leadership of the American union movement at all levels must represent the diversity of its membership. While there has been some progress over the years, we have heard today from the previous speakers how far we still need to go, especially at the highest decision-making levels. We are concerned about lack of diversity among the leadership bodies within the AFL-CIO and our affiliates, and we are also concerned about proposals to reduce the size of the AFL-CIO executive council without a strong commitment to maintain and increase diversity. 

Second, our central challenge as a movement is organizing the unorganized. To succeed, we must reach out to women and people of color in our organizing campaigns. We mush have organizers who are women and people of color. We must use the constituency groups to work with our community allies who represent women, people of color, LGBs, immigrants and the poor and we must have a diverse leadership that looks like the workers we are organizing.

Third, we support a strong, unified effort to elect pro-worker candidates. Our communities have traditionally shown incredible support for pro-worker candidates at the polls, and the American labor movement should do everything it can to help us mobilize our communities and engage them in the civic process. To succeed in that effort, people of color and women must be involved in all levels of decision making with regard to political action.

Fourth, we must have a comprehensive agenda for civil, human and women’s rights. While we support a focus on organizing and political action, these cannot be separated from a strong civil and women’s rights agenda that seeks an end to discrimination in the workplace and supports affirmative action, equal pay, immigrant worker’s rights, and the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers.

And fifth, we need to look at the larger picture of what is harming our communities and demand an end to policies of free trade and corporate dominated globalization that has lowered our standard of living and promoted a race to the bottom.

To advance these goals, the Labor Coalition of Community Action worked with several state fed and CLC allies who introduced Resolution 16 supporting Civil, Human and Women’s Rights. This resolution calls upon  the AFL-CIO to increase its support for organizing and political action in our communities, increase support for the civil and women’s rights department, implement the diversity principles from the Council’s Women’s and Civil Rights Committees (calling for greater diversity in convention delegations, in the AFL-CIO governing body and in state and local labor bodies) and promote greater diversity in affiliate leadership.

This is our agenda for change. We ask you to speak up within your unions in support of this agenda, and we welcome your thoughts on this in the afternoon session.