Year in Review

The CTO and Strategic Organizing Campaign Partnerships

During the 2022 AFL-CIO Convention, we announced the creation of the Center for Transformational Organizing (CTO) to reinvigorate our movement-wide organizing ambitions. Our goal for the next 10 years is to organize 1 million new members by working across unions on specific campaigns that we identify together. 

We want to optimize the CTO’s impact by building capacity through our state federations and central labor councils to support organizing. The CTO is part of a renewed push to prioritize organizing in all federation work, take advantage of this moment and build worker power at scale. 

We made major strides in 2022 on the organizing front. We worked with unions and partners such as Jobs to Move America to train and mobilize workers for job quality standards in publicly funded manufacturing investments. 

The Seattle AFL-CIO Presidents’ Organizing Initiative organized several thousand workers, primarily at the city’s three stadiums, bringing a density increase at T-Mobile Park to 70% from 30% and at Climate Pledge Arena to more than 90% from 0%. We coordinated the largest multi-union solidarity support in decades, with 15 unions and other labor bodies donating 100 staff organizers to support Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU)-UFCW’s campaign for Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama. 

More than ever before, we saw unions supporting joint activity in organizing, and we look forward to even greater momentum in the coming year.

Advocacy and Legislative Wins

2022 was the most productive year in decades for legislation and investments in good jobs and worker protections. The impact will be felt for years to come. The AFL-CIO and affiliate unions won passage of landmark pro-worker legislation, including $2 trillion in investments in infrastructure, clean energy and domestic manufacturing in emerging industries, such as semiconductors, as well as implementation of key elements of the American Rescue Plan, including the Special Financial Assistance Program for multi-employer pension plans.

For the first time in nearly 10 years, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will finally receive a $25 million desperately needed boost in funding. Across this country, workers are organizing within their workplaces with renewed vigor in the face of employers’ union-busting tactics and harassment. This critical funding will help ensure that the NLRB can do its job by protecting workers’ fundamental right to form or join a union.

The 29th AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention, held in Philadelphia in June, was a celebration of union solidarity, democracy and innovation. We elected historic leadership: President Shuler, the first woman president of the American labor movement, and Secretary-Treasurer Fredrick Redmond, the first African American in that role.

We adopted a bold and powerful agenda for change through the resolution process, reasserting our commitment to grow the labor movement through new organizing, strengthen our state and local bodies, deepen our commitment to racial justice and inclusion, invest in good jobs in emerging industries, engage young workers and our communities and more. In total, 25 resolutions were adopted.