Working people in the United States need and want unions. Building worker power through organizing is the way to win better lives. Negotiating contracts with the wages, benefits, security and working conditions we need is foundational. And growing unions is the way to build the working-class organization powerful enough to create a real, inclusive economy and democracy.
After years of attacks on workers’ rights and a shrinking labor movement, together, we have reversed that trend, and organized and grown by 1 million members in the last three years. We have surpassed the goal we set at the last Convention. We have stood up to organize in industries where there were no unions. We have led heroic strikes. We have grown by providing the skilled workforce that is needed for the 21st century through union apprenticeships. And we will do more. We will grow our unions by at least 2 million more workers by 2032.
Workers need more power to improve our everyday lives at work. And when workers are organized, the effects are felt far beyond the workplace. When we are organized to stand up at work, we are ready to mobilize in our communities, get in the streets and turn out at the ballot box. That organization is needed to turn the tide of authoritarianism and strengthen our democracy.
We will act boldly and strategically, guided by a long-term vision to build worker power in our workplaces, our communities and our capital markets. We will center our organizing with workers most impacted by the failings of modern capitalism—women, people of color, young workers, immigrant workers and workers in the South. Our organizing program will be grounded in the priorities of the international unions and supported by the structures of the AFL-CIO.
To deliver on our vision, we will:
- Accelerate bold organizing initiatives to create seismic change for workers, like the Center for Transformational Organizing, by seeking cross-movement opportunities to challenge union-busting corporations, drive multiunion, multisector organizing campaigns, coordinate strategy, leverage our power as a movement, and maximize resources and capacity.
- Align our organizing and political work to make worker organizing a core goal anywhere we support candidates. Union members come together across differences every day to organize and negotiate contracts around their shared interests. Our organizing can be a model for a new approach to politics in this country.
- Expand and develop coordinated, local organizing strategies in key geographies that build solidarity among unions, deepen alignment with community organizations and deliver tangible wins for working people—through the joint work of international unions, the AFL-CIO, and our state and local federations.
- Invest in campaigns that enable workers to also organize outside labor board processes, creating pathways around delays and abuse by unscrupulous employers.
- Initiate a mass training program to provide basic organizing skills, tactics and strategy to working people who want to organize.
- Seek opportunities to align bargaining demands and contract expirations to amplify the power of collective action, including strikes, at its broadest possible level.
- Support federal workers and other workers who lack statutory bargaining rights but organize to build and maintain power regardless of legal designs by their employers.
- Strengthen community partnerships by finding common interests and developing long-term local partnerships—especially in the wake of attacks on immigrant workers and betrayal of our democratic values.
- Work to ensure that the trillions of dollars of workers’ pension and retirement investments do not finance the attack against working people, but instead support sustainable economic growth that creates good jobs, strong returns and a more inclusive economy.
- Build investor support for greater corporate accountability and responsible management practices that respect workers’ freedom of association and rights to bargain collectively.
- Commit that no candidate should receive labor’s support unless they are willing to fight for stronger collective bargaining rights and the empowerment of working people.
- Redouble support for legislation to reform our broken labor law system and look for every opportunity to expand the right to organize and bargain:
- We will fight for passage of the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act) and its provisions, which also appear in other bills like the Faster Labor Contracts Act and the LET’S Protect Workers Act; the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act; the Protect America’s Workforce Act; and other reforms to restore, strengthen and expand rights for all workers, including public sector workers, gig workers, farm workers, domestic workers and others newly or long-excluded from the legally protected right to a union, so that the more than 50 million nonunion workers who want a union have a union. We will seek reforms at every level of government to bolster the collective power of workers and unions, including the strike and other forms of collective action. We will support amending state constitutions to enshrine the right of workers to organize, join unions and collectively bargain, like efforts currently underway in Vermont.
- We will advocate an end to worker misclassification—a widespread, largely hidden and rarely punished crime that allows low-road employers to steal billions from workers, undermines responsible law-abiding employers, and deprives local, state and federal governments of lawful revenue. Workers designated as independent contractors rather than employees are deprived of the most fundamental rights and protections, including the right to form a union and collective bargaining. It is estimated more than 2 million workers in the construction industry alone are misclassified, while 10% to 30% of employers across a variety of industries engage in the practice. While we have made progress in some states to combat misclassification, such as through the adoption of the “ABC test” in 14 states, new threats have emerged in Congress and the Trump administration via anti-worker legislation and regulation designed to make it easier to misclassify workers. We will continue to educate the public about misclassification, and its impact on workers and communities, and fight to end misclassification through state reforms, federal legislation like the Wage Theft Protection Recovery Act and the Don’t Steal Act, and robust, effective enforcement of both new laws and existing protections.
- We will explore and fight for innovations to ensure worker power can be built regardless of how the nature of work changes or how the boss structures the work, such as future legislation to create new opportunities to organize and bargain not just workplace by workplace but on an industrywide basis, where workers and unions have an interest in pursuing this, industry-specific minimum standards legislation and measures that provide support for striking workers.
- Our call to reform labor law will not be limited to federal, state or local legislation alone. Wherever and however labor standards are set, public investment is made and public officials choose which side they are on—we will be there to protect, encourage and facilitate organizing, collective bargaining and improving standards for all working people.
[SUBMITTED BY THE AFL-CIO EXECUTIVE COUNCIL]