The Growth Strategies Team in the AFL-CIO Economic Power and Growth Hub, provides comprehensive campaign strategy development and execution to support affiliate unions’ organizing for membership growth. Our work includes corporate, industry and issue research and analysis. We work in partnership with AFL-CIO unions to enhance strategic research capacity and expertise. We often play a role as a convener, identifying industry-wide organizing opportunities or innovative strategies that may be of interest to multiple unions, allowing them to direct limited resources more powerfully in coordination with each other. One such campaign that we’ve been proud to partner with six unions on is Jobs to Move America—a national project to harness the power of the billions of federal funds going to the transportation industry each year in service of high-quality jobs, investment in disadvantaged communities and U.S. manufacturing.
We are also committed to the training and recruitment of union researchers. We offer residential and web-based trainings throughout the year, including the weeklong, intensive Strategic Corporate Research Summer School that is co-sponsored with the City University of New York’s School of Labor and Urban Studies. CSR also maintains a union researcher résumé database and offers custom recruitment support for research recruitment to our affiliate unions.
Feel free to reach out to May Kyi, Director of Growth Strategies, for more information.
The Strategic Corporate Research Summer School
This is a critical and important time to be in the labor movement, and there is a role for everyone in the ongoing struggle. Strategic researchers are key; they help leaders and members gain insight about corporate structure and finance, and identifying strategic ways to prevail against those who oppose justice on the job and in our communities.
Over the past two and a half decades, the AFL-CIO and Cornell University have offered a weeklong course of study at the annual Strategic Corporate Research Summer School at Cornell in Ithaca, New York. The course has served hundreds of labor and social activists from every corner of the globe to advance their careers as union researchers.
Now, the Strategic Corporate Research Summer School is moving to City University of New York's School of Labor and Urban Studies (CUNY SLU). The next Summer School will take place June 21-26, at CUNY’s SLU, in the heart of New York City.
Applications will open at CUNY SLU's website in January 2026. If you have questions, contact Aaron Brenner, [email protected].