Executive Council Statement | Better Pay and Benefits

Building a Unified Labor Movement: Creating Effective State and Local Labor Councils

Las Vegas

The American labor movement is facing its greatest challenge, and the key to our prevailing in this crisis is to greatly—and quickly—expand our political power. One of the most important steps we can take to accomplish this goal is to dramatically improve the performance of our state and local labor organizations, which have the primary responsibility for carrying out the programs of the national AFL-CIO.

During recent years, strides have been made in strengthening these organizations, through our Union Cities program and our New Alliance efforts at the state level. Many state and local organizations are stronger now than before, and the leaders of these organizations have been leaders in this change process. But these changes have not been fast enough nor have enough states and local labor movements undertaken these changes. We must move faster and reach farther.

The AFL-CIO Committee on State and Local Strategies, charged with overseeing these important matters, met jointly with leaders of our state and local central bodies to review a range of ideas for strengthening these organizations. The discussions produced a consensus proposal from this group to the committee upon which we can build. We applaud the leadership shown by these trade unionists, and we largely agree with their formulation of what needs to be done.

The national AFL-CIO should quickly move to put in place the priorities outlined in this proposal. The federation should draft constitutional changes that may be needed to fully implement these ideas. Such a program should have, at its core, the following elements:

  • Our goal must be a unified, effective and well resourced mobilization program for politics, legislation and support for organizing at the national, state and local levels, connecting members where they work and live to local, state and national issues and campaigns.
  • Winning national, state and local elections must start with mobilizing our members around issues that affect them in their communities and where they work. State federations and central labor bodies must have the capacity to run effective mobilization programs on a continuing basis, not just during national elections.
  • The national AFL-CIO should establish, state by state, integrated strategic planning and budgeting systems that develop the plans and provide for the resources to carry out effective political and member mobilization for these plans. The interests of all parts of the labor movement, including the national AFL-CIO, state federations, central labor councils, national and local unions and constituency groups, must be represented in these strategies, and these efforts must be supported by all levels of the labor movement.
  • State federations and labor councils must be held to high standards for their work—and fully supported when they meet these standards. The national AFL-CIO must provide the mechanisms to ensure full support from all affiliates for the organizations that are meeting the standards and benchmarks and implementing nationally approved plans.
  • State federations and labor councils must also be accountable when they are not effectively carrying out a nationally approved plan. The national AFL-CIO must ensure that these plans reflect coordination between state federations and their respective central labor councils, and are implemented by providing sufficient support, training, coordination and resources. But the national AFL-CIO must be empowered and required to assume control over the affairs of a state or local body to ensure coordination and compliance with these plans if necessary.
  • The AFL-CIO should phase in these state plans, starting with a number of key states that are most important for the labor movement’s political strategies.
  • Within states, central labor councils should be amalgamated where needed to form large metropolitan, area and regional bodies that have sufficient capacity to carry out these political mobilization plans; at the same time, either labor councils or some other bodies, should be maintained or established to provide a political voice in the various communities for the union members who reside or work there. In some states there are too many small and ineffective labor councils. The national AFL-CIO shall lead this re-mapping process.
  • The Committee on State and Local Strategies should oversee this implementation process—in consultation with other key committees, such as Political and Organizing.