The economy should work for people, not the other way around. An economy that works for people is one that, at a minimum, produces good jobs, not precarious work. A good job is one in which you can not only live, but thrive. We should not need to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. Nor should we allow corporations to subvert our rights through misclassification or gig work. We should all have a good job with rights, wages that support a family, health care, retirement and other benefits, safe working conditions and a voice on the job. By exercising our collective power at the bargaining table, in policymaking and in the marketplace, we can shape today and tomorrow’s economy to produce good jobs and improve everyone’s quality of life.
It is union power that has secured good jobs that built a stable middle class. We must continue to secure good jobs in manufacturing, services, construction and all industries to assure artificial intelligence doesn’t degrade our job quality, and be poised to meet the challenges of preserving and building good jobs in the energy sector. We have built the biggest, most effective worker training system in the world, which is designed to promote good jobs. We must not only maintain but expand registered union apprenticeships, as they are critical to securing millions of family-supporting jobs, and ensuring the quality and efficient completion of critical infrastructure projects that make an economy run.
We continue to support the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute, North America’s Building Trades Unions, state federations’ workforce development offices and staff, and all labor-affiliated workforce development organizations whose work is to support affiliates and federated bodies on workforce development programs and policy and oppose any effort to cut federal funding or standards for workforce development programs.
All public investments in those projects, tied with labor standards that build with union labor a 21st century infrastructure for transportation, communication, energy and more, must be robust and urgently deployed.
A Worker-Centered Industrial Policy
Decades of misguided trade and economic policy gutted communities and hollowed out our industrial base, as more than 90,000 factories shuttered and 5 million manufacturing workers lost their livelihoods. We call for a worker-centered industrial policy that supports and creates good, union jobs, reinvigorates communities across our nation and restores the resiliency of the critical supply chains on which we all rely. To support working families, this moment demands action on four key pillars: trade, investment, procurement and workers’ rights.
Pillar 1: Trade Policy That Puts Workers First
The labor movement has been leading the fight for a trade policy that puts families and communities first. We must not let the recent chaos lead us back to the old corporate-driven trade model that destroyed millions of good, family-sustaining union jobs and hollowed out countless communities in our country. We recommit to the fight for a durable and strategic pro-worker agenda that prioritizes good jobs at home while lifting standards abroad.
We must renegotiate the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to address the offshoring of good, union jobs and the weaponization of this threat to undermine workers’ ability to form a union and collectively bargain. The agreement must also strengthen rules of origin, including for sectors like aerospace and appliances, improve labor and environmental standards in Mexico, and prevent China from using Mexico as a back door to circumvent our laws.
We support strong and expanded trade enforcement tools like the strategic application of tariffs to level the playing field for American workers. This means defending and strengthening our anti-dumping and countervailing duty laws, mechanisms to review outbound investment that hurts our workers and security, and protecting strategic, effective trade tools like Section 301 and Section 232 that have played a critical role in supporting good jobs.
All revenue derived from tariffs should be put toward programs that directly benefit working people, including investing in union-friendly domestic manufacturing and infrastructure projects; union-led workforce development, registered apprenticeship, apprenticeship utilization, pre-apprenticeship and retraining programs; support for workers, communities and union-friendly industries adversely affected by trade disruptions; and strengthening of social safety nets such as trade adjustment assistance, unemployment insurance and health care access. The allocation of tariff revenues should be monitored to ensure transparency.
We support regular reviews in trade agreements to ensure Congress and workers can influence these agreements that have such a dramatic impact on our lives. These reviews must be conducted with stakeholder engagement, not in shady backrooms where workers’ interests can be ignored or sold out, to raise and enforce labor standards and boost domestic employment.
We must reauthorize and strengthen Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) to support workers laid off through no fault of their own and the communities where they live. TAA has a long track record of success, providing resources and training opportunities to help workers get back on their feet, but it has been sabotaged by cruel, cynical politics, depriving nearly 200,000 workers and counting of a desperately needed lifeline.
We must sync our tax code with our trade policy, putting an end to provisions that not only fail to deter offshoring, but actively incentivize it.
We must fully fund foreign assistance programs to raise labor standards in global supply chains to improve the lives of workers in the countries with which we trade and to level the playing field for our workers, who are all too often pitted against exploited workforces in low standard countries.
We must protect the economic security of the more than 5 million people who work in the motion picture, television and music industries, and other parts of the creative sector. Many of these workers earn collectively bargained pay and contributions to their health insurance and pension plans from the sales and licensing of the copyrighted works they help create. We must aggressively address the stolen or unlicensed use of copyrighted content, including the practice of companies training their artificial intelligence models on copyrighted material without consent or compensation.
Pillar 2: Investing in Our Workers and Communities
Our trade policy must be complemented by significant, strategic and durable investment programs. These investments must include resources to drive demand for key industries, support for the modernization or expansion of existing facilities as well as new factories, and resources for worker-led training programs to attract, and retain, workers in good, union jobs.
We will fight to restore investments in critical energy projects and domestic supply chains. This funding helped spur historic investments in manufacturing construction and laid the groundwork for hundreds of thousands of new jobs. We must also invest in other key industries to expand employment and capacity, including our nation’s shipbuilding, auto, aerospace, critical minerals mining and processing, and upstream materials manufacturing industries. These investments will foster innovation, strengthen supply chains, expand domestic energy production and grow the middle class. This funding for capacity must be coupled with policies to drive demand signals that unlock private investment to maximize the impact of public dollars.
We must also invest in our workers to ensure that the existing workforce is prepared to adapt to changes in production, and to recruit and retain the workers needed as we expand domestic supply chains.
Pillar 3: Leveraging the Government’s Purchasing Power to Support Working Families
Domestic content policies align our procurement with our values by ensuring American workers have the first shot at supplying goods and services purchased with taxpayer dollars. By reinvesting our taxpayer dollars at home, we’re investing in family- and community-sustaining jobs across this country at factories that are often far less polluting, and far safer for workers, than competitors overseas.
We must preserve Buy America policies that have for years supported workers supplying materials and products for federally assisted infrastructure projects, and continue our efforts to close administratively created loopholes that undermine these pro-worker preferences.
We must work to increase content requirements and close loopholes that undermine Buy America preferences for direct procurement by the federal government to support workers in the aerospace, defense, automotive, energy and other sectors. Additionally, simply buying “American” is not enough if we want our tax dollars to support good jobs. Procurement policy should systematically favor union-made products, prioritizing workplaces with collective bargaining agreements, using the scale of federal spending to promote union organizing.
Further, our commercial and public shipbuilding industries that conduct production and sustainment work for our armed services continue to suffer from inconsistent demand, mixed policy signals and loopholes that undermine their ability to invest and plan for the future and retain workers. We oppose any efforts to shift work, from the production of vessels to sustainment activities to repair and maintain key vessels, to overseas yards.
The Jones Act, and all related cabotage and cargo preference laws, must be protected, and loopholes should be closed to maximize their effectiveness. These laws support hundreds of thousands of good jobs in the maritime and shipbuilding industries, as well as in upstream supply chains, and contribute billions of dollars to our economy. In addition, the Jones Act provides for a pool of well-trained, reliable U.S. citizen mariners available to sail aboard U.S.-flag military support vessels in times of crisis. The AFL-CIO enthusiastically commits to continue its critical fight for the good-paying jobs created by the Jones Act.
The Export-Import Bank (EXIM Bank) supports tens of thousands of good jobs across our nation in industries like aerospace and energy production; it deserves to be fully funded to carry out its mission, allowed to expand its portfolio of projects, and must continue to include domestic content requirements that create additional U.S. jobs and drive economic growth. Further, these provisions should extend to all U.S. support of overseas purchases and development, including the Development Finance Corporation.
Other provisions supporting domestic procurement and production must be defended and strengthened as well, including the Specialty Metals Clause, the Berry and Kissell Amendments, and Title III of the Defense Production Act.
Pillar 4: Pairing Industrial Policy with the Right to Collectively Bargain
Rebuilding our domestic industrial base after decades of corporate-centered trade, tax and disinvestment policies will only revitalize communities and lead to a meaningfully better life for working families if workers are able to join together to form a union free from interference and leverage the power of collective bargaining. We should not fool ourselves that reindustrialization alone is the answer to the economic difficulties facing communities damaged by the unfair trade policies of the past. Strong unions are what gave production workers access to the American Dream, by lifting wage and benefit standards across entire industries and regions.
We must strengthen workers’ freedom to organize and collectively bargain via labor law reforms, including through the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. When our government spends taxpayer dollars to foster industrial activity, these investments must come with requirements that recipients recognize workers’ right to form a union and collectively bargain. We must leverage procurement rules to ensure that not only are taxpayers dollars supporting domestic manufacturing, they are prioritizing producers where workers have a voice at the table through their union.
Taxpayer dollars should not promote low-road labor practices. We urge all federal, state and local governments to require that any public funds directly or indirectly used for expanding U.S. manufacturing, maintenance and operations include mandatory participation in union registered apprenticeship programs for all manufacturers, contractors and subcontractors; enforcement of wage and benefit standards no less than prevailing wages and benefits established under applicable collective bargaining agreements; and apprenticeship utilization requirements that ensure a minimum percentage of total labor hours are performed by apprentices enrolled in union registered apprenticeship programs.
Artificial Intelligence
We stand at a crossroads that will define the future of work and the lives of working people. Big Tech billionaires are pushing a relentless agenda to ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) and other rapidly advancing technologies infiltrate every corner of our economy, public services and society. They are promoting false, utopian visions of an AI-improved society, based on technologies that are often fundamentally flawed. At the same time, they are spending a fortune in politics to stop any guardrails or accountability that would stand in the way of their dangerous profiteering.
But working people are not so easily fooled. They know that, while AI products may create potential benefits, without proper oversight and strong guardrails they present far greater dangers. Indeed, many workers are living with these dangers on a daily basis. Working families are being crushed by an affordability crisis, made worse when predatory AI systems use their data to raise prices discriminately because they live in the wrong zip code. Unregulated AI is already threatening jobs, degrading job quality, endangering workers’ safety and health, undermining labor and civil rights, and dehumanizing and abusing workers through Draconian surveillance and automated management. Beyond the workplace, unregulated AI presents a clear and present danger to our safety, our privacy and the very fabric of our democracy.
Working people don’t want this for their future and their children’s future. They understand that the most important things about our jobs—and our society—are human, and that this human element cannot and should not be replaced by unproven, faceless AI systems.
The AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions stand resolved to stop Big Tech billionaires from recklessly unleashing untested and potentially dangerous technologies without consideration or constraint. We stand with workers in demanding a different vision of the future—where working people are in the driver’s seat deciding how and whether AI and other advanced technologies are developed and deployed, and ensuring that innovation delivers societal benefits, creates opportunity for everyone and does not lead to more inequality, discrimination or economic disruption.
That’s why we have built the first-of-its-kind Workers First AI Agenda grounded in principles that bind the interests of all people, no matter what they do, where they live, who they voted for or how they feel about new technology. These principles call for industry and government leaders to:
- Strengthen labor rights and broaden opportunities for collective bargaining.
- Advance guardrails against harmful uses of AI at work.
- Support and promote copyright and intellectual property protections.
- Develop a worker-centered workforce development and training system.
- Institutionalize “worker voice” within AI research and development.
- Require transparency and accountability in AI applications.
- Model best practices for AI use with government procurement.
- Protect workers’ civil rights and uphold democratic integrity.
Beyond these principles, the AFL-CIO will meet this moment with action. We will launch and mobilize a broad campaign to bring the Workers First AI Agenda to life, partnering with elected officials, civil society, philanthropy and businesses that are willing to choose a different path forward. We will expand our nationwide policy training program to ensure that unions and AFL-CIO state and local bodies are equipped with the tools and knowledge they need to advance this campaign and make meaningful change in every sector of the economy and every community across the nation.
This campaign will be built on a foundation of three core objectives:
- Guardrails to protect the safety and wellbeing of all working families. We need worker-centered legislation in every state to protect people from harms that AI and technology can present on and off the job, from discrimination to invasions of privacy to threats to data security to harms to worker health and safety. In the public sector, we must also prevent government leaders at all levels from testing and deploying AI use in government without strong and enforceable guardrails that protect both the people who deliver public services and the public they serve, and ensure that technology neither makes rights-determining decisions nor is not used as an excuse to eliminate positions.
- Guarantees for working families weathering economic transitions. We must use all available tools—collective action, bargaining, legislation (e.g., the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act with its protections against deepfakes) and executive action—to prevent job loss and degradation. Government, employers and Big Tech must share in the responsibility to strengthen existing support programs and create a stronger, comprehensive social safety net that will protect working people during this time of massive economic transition, and we must avoid the kinds of failures and harms inflicted on working families and their communities by the economic disruptions caused by American trade policies.
- Growth and opportunity for future generations. We need workers at the table in all stages of the innovation process to ensure that new technologies are developed in ways that make workers’ jobs safer and better. We demand that employers bargain over the development and deployment of AI and technology in the workplace—not just in the private sector, but in the public sector as well. We demand economic policies that allow workers to share in the economic gains that technology brings. And we must prepare the next generation for the economy of the future, while expanding the labor movement’s leadership as the largest private sector job training provider to ensure that all workers have access to the high-quality training, wraparound supports and career pathways they need to succeed.
The best way for workers to navigate this new terrain is through unions. Our movement has the power to stop Big Tech billionaires from weaponizing AI against workers and to make sure the AI revolution improves working people’s lives and livelihoods. We are ready to lead the fight to protect the dignity and humanity of work.
Our message to elected leaders is clear and unequivocal: You can either stand with Big Tech’s drive to maximize profits at all cost, or you can stand with working people in supporting responsible and careful technological change. But you can’t do both.
Good Union Jobs—Powering the Economy, Affordable Electricity and Responding to the Impacts of Climate Change
The world is entering a new Age of Electricity, where national prosperity, jobs and competitiveness depend on a bigger, cleaner and more resilient power sector as more sectors of the economy go electric. In the United States, the electricity sector, its supply chains and U.S. electricity demand are growing for the first time in decades. It is a tremendous opportunity to organize, grow our movement and invest for the long term in a diversified, made-in-America clean energy economy that keeps the United States globally competitive.
To meet this moment, we must ensure that lawmakers, policymakers and other stakeholders recognize labor’s critical role in achieving success. The labor movement must tackle these challenges head on. We need high-road labor standards at all levels so that we can increase union power in this rapidly growing sector. We must expand union workforce development, including labor-management training programs, registered apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeship programs, so that more union members are ready to take on these new jobs and unions are able to expand our ranks. We must meet increased demand and keep prices down for working-class families with all sources of energy and storage; Made in America supply chains; faster permitting; and a modernized, expanded grid. We need to stay engaged in global institutions and processes, in order to ensure a level playing field for U.S. workers and U.S. products. And we need real plans, funding and good union jobs to keep communities safe and make infrastructure resilient to escalating climate disasters, such as wildfires, storms, extreme heat and floods.
We also recognize that high-quality jobs held by union members across our economy in sectors producing or using fossil energy are at risk as well. Fossil-fuel production and use has not only provided the energy that made our modern economy, but also supports union jobs in a broad range of sectors—energy production, manufacturing, transportation, delivery networks and more. We know that true energy security means domestic production of both the fuels we need and the clean energy goods of the future.
Growing Our Movement and the Power Sector
We will organize, train new workers, and grow good union jobs across the power sector and its supply chains, and:
- Demand high labor standards, including safety and workforce development, at every level and in every part of the power sector and its supply chains, including mining, manufacturing, transportation, construction, operations and maintenance.
- Fight to protect today’s good, union jobs in energy, while ensuring that any workers displaced by new technologies get either training, skills and a new good, union job of equivalent quality, and a pathway to pension and a dignified retirement.
- Fight to expand union workforce development, including labor-management training programs, registered apprenticeship programs and pre-apprenticeship programs, so we meet this moment with union workers.
- Continue to grow our movement by ensuring equitable access to good, union jobs in energy for women, Black and brown workers, younger workers, veterans, returning citizens and LGBTQ+ workers.
- Advocate for laws and regulations that meet growing demand to include high-road labor standards; increasing the supply, transmission and storage of power from all energy sources; and protecting clean air and water for communities.
- Insist on long-term investments in a diversified, resilient, Made in America clean energy economy with good, union jobs and affordable, reliable and environmentally sustainable energy.
- Demand permitting reform that prioritizes good, union jobs, faster project delivery, meeting electricity demand, and keeping energy affordable, reliable and environmentally sustainable.
Affordable Electricity
Electricity bills in many states are now rising faster than inflation and workers’ wages. While higher electricity bills have many causes, what is clear is that we need investments and policies that will meet electricity demand for the long term, protect and grow union jobs, and protect working-class households from unaffordable energy. We will:
- Ensure that working-class households are protected from unaffordable electricity bills, while opposing false solutions that throttle much-needed investment in the power sector and threaten good union jobs.
- Oppose any privatization of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). TVA, while employing tens of thousands of union members, also provides self-sustaining, low-cost energy to more than 10 million residents across seven Southern states.
- Advocate for federal and state investments in the power sector that control electricity prices for the long term, include high-road labor standards and domestic content requirements, and prioritize affordable, reliable and environmentally sustainable energy and energy storage.
Good Union Jobs and Responsible Data Center Growth
Data centers are the physical foundation for the internet and the digital economy. Since data centers store, process and transmit our personal information, keeping data centers in the United States is key to protecting Americans’ data privacy and national security. Data centers run on electricity and, going forward, will contribute to increased electricity demand.
Data centers and the infrastructure and supply chains that support them already employ tens of thousands of union members. But data center growth has also triggered a wave of community concerns, and not all the workers that support data centers are currently unionized or have access to quality wages and benefits. Rooted in our Constitution and in solidarity with each other and the working class, we will:
- Demand that data centers, the infrastructure that powers them and their supply chains are manufactured, built, operated, secured and maintained in the United States with union labor.
- Protect working-class households and communities by advocating for laws and regulations that require data centers to pay their fair share of energy and water costs, and ensure that jobs in energy-intensive manufacturing are not affected.
- Demand legislation and regulations that ensure that data centers conserve energy and water.
- The technology sector and the data centers that support it currently enjoy large financial returns. Data center operators, owners and developers should pay their fair share of taxes. What is fair must be determined on a state-by-state basis, starting with whether tax exemptions or other subsidies—if they are provided—also include labor standards, transparency and claw-back provisions in the event that these conditions are not met.
- Require comprehensive transparency from data center operators, owners and developers to the extent permitted by law, and that they avoid disparate impacts, engage with unions, communities, and state and local decision makers, and invest in projects and services that include high-road labor standards and benefit communities.
Global
Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act and the Investment in Infrastructure and Jobs Act, the United States has had record investment and job growth in clean energy and its supply chains, and increasing union density in this sector.
We can continue to lead, but not by putting American workers and American interests on the world’s sidelines while our competitors move ahead and negotiate agreements about the future of energy without us. We will:
- Advocate for continued U.S. government and labor engagement in international negotiations on climate, energy and energy jobs, particularly the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Paris Agreement, the International Energy Agency and the International Labor Organization.
- Work in solidarity with our union siblings in other countries and with the international trade union movement to ensure that American workers continue to have a voice on international energy and climate issues.
A Climate Resilient Economy Focused on Workers and Communities
The impacts of extreme weather are accelerating in the United States and across the world. Each year, the United States experiences bigger and more harmful climate-related events that are endangering workers where they live and on the job. The ever-increasing number and severity of wildfires, extreme heat events, floods and storms requires a large-scale, whole of government and worker-focused response, built on investments in public services, the public sector, infrastructure and good, union jobs. We will:
- Demand investments and policies at all levels that secure dedicated funding at scale with strong labor standards for the build-out of resilient infrastructure and expanded public services, disaster response, recovery and rebuilding.
- Fight for worker protections against climate impacts, including heat standards, exposure to smoke, safety for first responders and wage replacement programs for workers displaced by extreme weather events.
- Use a social and economic justice lens for investments, union jobs and services, so that rural, marginalized and Black and brown communities get timely and adequate funding and services for disaster preparedness, response and recovery.
- Strengthen state systems for disaster preparedness, response and recovery to ensure all communities are protected from extreme weather events.