Executive Council Statement | Better Pay and Benefits

Voice@Work-The Freedom to Choose a Union Involving Public Officials

Chicago, IL

Organizing is the lifeblood of the labor movement—and helping men and women organize into unions is a core part of the mission and goals of the AFL-CIO. We seek to build a broad movement of American workers by helping workers organize and creating a strong political and collective voice for workers on the job, in the community, in the nation and in the global economy.

In 1999, in response to the widespread suppression by employers of workers' freedom to choose a union, the AFL-CIO launched the Voice@Work campaign. Through the Voice@Work campaign, our unions are changing the way we organize to expose employer tactics and to open up workers' campaigns to gain a voice at work to greater community involvement.

In the last two years, we have learned that elected officials have a special role to play in helping their constituents protect their organizing rights. In the present, elected officials at every level can play an active role in supporting workers who are organizing. In the future, we will call on them to change our nation's labor laws so that workers can join a union as freely as they choose a house of worship or a neighborhood in which to live.  

The time has come to begin the process of linking politics to organizing, and to place organizing at the center of the labor movement's political agenda.  

To this end, the AFL-CIO will encourage its affiliated unions, state federations and central labor councils to educate public officials about the obstacles that workers face when they try to form and join unions and bargain collectively, by helping to unite elected officials with their own constituents who are organizing.

Furthermore, we now adopt the attached statement of principles, a basic expression of support for workers' freedom to choose a union that we hope all elected officials and candidates will come to embrace. We encourage our affiliated unions, state federations, and central labor councils to use the statement of principles as a tool with candidates seeking political support. 

Most importantly, we encourage all unions, state federations and central labor councils not simply to ask elected officials to sign the statement, but to afford elected officials the opportunity to take active steps to reduce the extent and effects of employer interference in the lives of their constituents. 

Each affiliated body may choose for itself whether to treat signing the statement as a necessary condition of support or one important consideration among their major policy concerns.

For our part, beginning in the upcoming election cycle, the national AFL-CIO will make signing the statement of principles a core criterion for candidates seeking our endorsement for president of the United States.

   STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES FOR PUBLIC OFFICIALS

           The Freedom to Choose a Union

As an elected official or candidate for office, I am committed to making our community a better place to live and work. I believe that unions contribute to the economic vitality of our country by playing a key role in making and maintaining good quality jobs that are essential to creating and sustaining thriving communities. I respect the right of every working person to pursue equality, opportunity, a voice on the job and a better life by forming a union. I understand that the decision to join a union should be the free choice of an employee, absent employer coercion.  I believe that employers who interfere with, harass, threaten, or fire workers for trying to form a union B or who deliberately manipulate the legal system to prevent or delay organizing B are harming not only their employees, but our entire community. Such tactics have the effect of denying workers their basic human right to organize and bargain collectively, and drive down standards for the community as a whole. 

_ I fully support the principle that all workers are entitled to freedom of association at work, as recognized by the ILO, a United Nations-related body, and I support the right of workers' to form a union and bargain collectively — in an environment free of interference, intimidation, coercion, harassment, reprisals or delay.

_ I will publicly support workers who are forming unions by reaffirming the importance of unions to our communities and by taking actions such as issuing public statements, attending rallies supporting organizing, sponsoring public forums, and the like.

_ I will urge employers to respect their employees= right to form a union, to remain neutral during union organizing campaigns, to recognize a union voluntarily when a majority of their employees choose to form one, and to bargain in good faith and reach an agreement.

Name (print):                         _________________________________________ 

Signed:                                   _________________________________________ 

Office Held/Sought:                _________________________________________ 

Date:                                       _________________________________________