AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler's remarks as prepared for delivery at the AFL-CIO 30th Constitutional Convention.
Thank you, union family!
Fred Redmond, we were a team from Day One. I can’t tell you how much I lean on you every single day.
You’re a giant in our movement, and I’m honored to be in this fight with you. I can feel the power in this room today. Can you feel it? We’re vibrating with it. And we’re ready to use it, aren’t we?
Because we’re going to build an economy that works for people who actually work for a living. Why would we have an economy that does anything else but that?
I’m so excited to be here WITH YOU in Minneapolis these next four days.
We have so much planned. The only thing we don’t have is a UFC cage match happening on the lawn outside. But as excited as I am to see everyone today, there is one person that I need to acknowledge right now.
And that’s my dad, Lance Shuler—who alongside my mom, Joyce, who passed away when I was 36, are the single biggest reasons I’m up here today.
It was a stretch to be on camera with Kenny Cooper and here you are again. Thank you Kenny, and April, and Brittany for those beautiful nominations. My dad is absolutely cringing right now. But for all the times he made me cringe growing up, this is karma, Dad!
My dad grew up in a one-room fruit-picking cabin in Hood River, Oregon. That’s him—the original Opie—with a fishing pole that’s about six times taller than he is.
There were a lot of nights he and his four siblings went to bed without dinner. As he grew up he took whatever odd jobs he could find—sandblasting tombstones, pumping gas, working in the orchards to help his family.
After high school, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, to serve his country, and got sent straight to Vietnam.
When he came home a few years later, he came back to protesters marching on the streets of his hometown; the National Guard on college campuses; a country that felt like it was coming apart at the seams—kind of like what we’re living through now.
He got married, and soon had a baby on the way—me—and needed a job.
He got his foot in the door at the power company, Portland General Electric, starting as a hole digger, and working his way up to being a ground man, then a truck driver.
As my sister Anna and I grew up, we couldn’t have been more proud of him and my mom.
We knew how hard they worked, and even if we didn’t have a lot, we always figured things out.
When we needed gas money, we would dig around the seat cushions in the car.
We had more tuna casserole than any family has ever had—because of those five-for-a-dollar cans at the grocery.
But they never stopped wanting more for Anna and me. Every parent in this room knows that feeling, don’t they?
And so my dad kept searching, pushing, trying to find a leg up. And it was the power lineman’s apprenticeship at PGE that was his ticket to that better future. It was the before and after moment for our family. It was like a light switch went on.
Suddenly we could go out to eat, we could go on a trip to Enchanted Forest; my parents could start to save for the first time in their lives and breathe a little easier.
That union apprenticeship—and the 37 years on the line at PGE—changed not just my dad’s life; it changed the course of our entire family. It changed generations of lives.
That’s the power of a good, union job.
It’s why I’m standing on this stage today.
It's why every single one of us is in this room.
Four years ago, we came together in Philadelphia, in one of the hardest moments we've faced as a federation.
We were mourning the loss of Rich Trumka. We were just emerging from the pandemic. Union density in this country was the lowest it had ever been. And as I stepped into this role, I knew we needed to do things differently, be honest with ourselves, if we wanted to change our trajectory.
Our doors weren’t truly open to everyone. We weren’t always connecting with that next generation, making sure we all had a say in the future we were building together.
If we were going to meet the moment, we had to try new approaches—include everyone, and live up to the words on that screen: with you.
We’ve taken some huge steps together these past four years, haven’t we? We said we would organize a million new workers over the next 10 years.
Guess what? We got it done in three.
We expanded this federation from 57 to 65 unions—now 15 million workers strong and growing.
We took the single biggest step in decades to unify the labor movement—2 million SEIU members are back in the house! And up against the most relentless attacks we have ever seen, we’ve stuck together. We’ve stayed unified.
And today: Union membership is at its highest level in 16 years!
We’ve used every bit of that power in the past 18 months, haven’t we?
When Donald Trump ripped away the collective bargaining of 1 million federal workers, the single biggest act of union-busting in American history—did we back down? Hell no.
We rallied behind them; we organized; and we brought tens of thousands of new federal workers into this movement.
When they came for our brothers David and Max—our immigrant neighbors and the most vulnerable among us—we did not give an inch; we kept them right here at home, in their communities, where they belong!
And when they brought federal troops to our streets, put guns in our faces here in Minneapolis—100,000 people in this city, led by our labor movement, came together to show them: you picked the wrong damn town.
We’ve shown people all over this country there is a way to fight back, and it’s called the labor movement.
Now it’s time to use that power—to build an economy that actually works for working people.
How many of us have flipped on that TV and heard how great this economy is. How incredible that the Dow hit another record high. For the reporters in this room who believe that—there are 2,000 real people here you can talk to.
They can tell you about the actual economy—the one that no one on Wall Street has thought about for more than five seconds.
Whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, Independent—rent is too high. Your paycheck doesn’t stretch as far as it used to. You walk into the grocery store, pick up one of those tuna cans I talked about earlier, and ask yourself: When did shit get so expensive?
Part of it is this guy—a president who has the gall to say: “I don't care about Americans’ financial situations.”
Getting us into needless wars; using tariffs in a chaotic way, against our allies; giving more attention to his ballroom than the workers who are building it.
But that economic pain—the uncertainty workers are living with right now—didn’t start with Donald Trump, and it won’t end with Donald Trump.
It’s going to end because we take on an entire system that has left working people behind, and we put in place an economy that values real work.
Are we ready to say no to CEOs who hand themselves $98 million dollars a year while their workers are struggling on food stamps just to get by?
Are we ready to say no to the Big Tech executives who want to play God with our jobs and our futures?
Are we ready to say hell no to billionaires like Peter Thiel who spend their lives taking from our communities, and then run away to Argentina when things get tough?
A rising tide doesn’t do any good if it’s only lifting up the yachts. Working people don’t run when things get tough. We stay and we fight for our families, our communities and our future.
That’s what my dad showed me all those years ago. That’s the grit I see in workers all over this country.
I see it in Simone—one of our nurses in New York who was out there in the freezing cold for 41 days, as they won the best contract they’ve ever had.
Now she’s going to have more time with her family; more money in her pocket; more chances to actually enjoy life.
That’s an economy that works for working people.
I see it in my IBEW sister Rachel out in Oregon—who was doing archival work at a museum, barely getting by, when she heard an ad that said: Are you getting paid less than you're worth?
She went after that apprenticeship, became an electrician—and now is talking about buying her own home, raising a family, actually feeling hopeful about her future.
All over this country, workers are winning that better future for themselves and their families.
Autoworkers in Chattanooga; Starbucks baristas in Ohio; home health aides—where more than 700,000 jobs are going to be created this next decade, and we’re going to organize every single one of them.
A whole new generation of manufacturing workers who are finding their futures in a good union job.
Every worker deserves to know that feeling, don’t they?
Moms who go from their 9-to-5s and then drive an Uber to keep food on the table; young people going to night school after a long shift; retirees re-entering the workforce because they don’t know if they have enough to pay for prescription drugs.
Life in the richest country in the history of the world shouldn’t be this hard.
And it doesn't have to be. We can change it. Starting right now.
Whoever you voted for in the last election, no matter where you live, your age, your job: if you work for a living in this country—you deserve more.
You deserve an economy that works for you, not the billionaires—and that’s exactly what our labor movement is going to deliver.
First things first: We need to right the ship with our politics.
We need to get pro-worker candidates into office.
But we can’t elect them if our elections are not fair and free.
How much more do we need to see? They’re closing our polling sites; purging our voter rolls; destroying the Voting Rights Act; disenfranchising voters of color.
The most powerful people in this country want to silence us.
There's only one institution that people trust to fight back—to protect the vote and protect our democracy—it’s our unions, and we’re going to step up and do it. In the last midterms, 14 million union members and their families hit the polls—in an election where literally a few thousand votes decided the future of our country.
So this year we're going to turn out 16 million—2 million more voters—the most ambitious program we’ve ever had.
And we're going to put 50,000 trained election protectors to work—staffing voter protection hot lines, being on hand at precincts where ICE might show up to intimidate immigrant voters—making sure every voice is heard.
But it's going to take more than elections. We need to keep growing our power in every workplace. For the past four years we’ve invested in organizing at unprecedented levels, and it’s paying off.
We’ve won in places that people told us we never could—bus manufacturers in the Deep South, cannabis dispensaries, the Met in New York City, Trader Joe’s, Drunk Shakespeare, 27,000 educators and school support staff in Fairfax, Virginia—in the “right to work South”—winning a fight 47 years in the making!
We set that goal last convention of organizing at least 1 million new workers over the next decade, and as I said, we hit it in three years.
Today we're doubling down on that goal, in half the time.
We're going to organize 2 million more over the next five years—and that’s a floor, not a ceiling!
Finally: If we’re going to build an economy for working people, we need to define the future of work on our terms.
A couple of years ago, I was sitting in a room on Capitol Hill next to Elon Musk, Alex Karp and Mark Zuckerberg, and the rest of the Big Tech billionaire crew.
Those tech guys talked about their vision for the future, all the cool possibilities they saw, and does anyone want to guess the one word that never came out of their mouths?
Workers.
And as we started talking about what AI meant to our members, the fear and anxiety folks had—out of the corner of my eye to my right, I saw Elon Musk literally start to do origami.
He would rather fold paper into a crane than talk about the human lives who will be impacted. That’s what they think about us. That’s how much they care about us.
Does anyone here want these billionaires deciding our future for us? Hell no. We’re not against technology if it makes our lives better and safer. We’re not anti-innovation. What we are is anti-greed.
We’re against these forces being used without our input and our consent—putting our jobs and lives at risk.
There is a better way forward.
Where we come together—labor, business, our politicians, industry experts, academics, everyone—and put the guardrails in place on AI to make it work for working people.
We're already proving that it can be done.
In states like Massachusetts and California, we’re introducing laws to ban robo-bosses, stop machines from hiring and firing us.
At unions like UNITE HERE, UAW, CWA and our entertainment family—SAG-AFTRA, WGA and IATSE—we’ve won historic contracts that say: You’re not going to give away our jobs.
You’re going to make these tools available with our consent, our input—so we can do our jobs even better.
And as these laws are shaped at the federal level—as these Big Tech companies spend tens of millions of dollars lobbying our politicians—we’re going to use the people power they can never buy.
We launched our Workers First AI Agenda last fall. Saying no, you can’t surveil us in the bathroom. No, you can’t steal our personal data. No, you can’t fire us by app.
Here are our demands: We want our seat at the table; we want training and upskilling for our workers. We want our civil rights protected and our basic right to organize.
How does that sound?
And for all of those candidates who are already starting to run for president in 2028, if you want to hold the highest office in the land, hear these words:
Working people should come before algorithms.
So when you show up in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Iowa, you name it—we’re going to be there and you’re going to have to answer to workers on AI.
This is our litmus test, right here.
I don't care if you’re Donald Trump or Gavin Newsom: You’re either with working people, or you’re with the Big Tech billionaires. Show us which side you’re on!
This is the single most important moment for our economy in a hundred years.
We’re going to look back 20 years from now and ask ourselves: Did we answer the call? Did we do the hard things, take risks, push ourselves as much as we could?
Because we are the only institution, the only movement, with the power to answer every challenge this country is facing right now.
We bring people together across party lines.
We check corporate power.
We defend our democracy.
We give people hope.
We go out and get shit done.
I’m so full of gratitude to everyone who’s made our progress possible—my team in the President’s Office; our AFL-CIO staff; affiliate union leaders and activists; state and local AFL-CIO leaders; my husband Dave, who has put up with some long nights and weekends and been my partner through everything. I was going to be in trouble if I forgot that one!
But for all we’ve accomplished, all the progress we’ve made—I’m not done, and I don’t think anyone else in this room is, either!
We’re just getting started, aren’t we? There are two words up there on the screen: with you.
Whatever fight you’re in, whatever you need to move forward: This entire federation is with you.
But those words are also a call to action.
This movement and the vision I just laid out: it only works with you.
With everyone in this room, everyone in this movement, challenging us, pushing us forward together.
Everything we’ve won as working people in this country, we won because we fought for it.
Because we knew it was worth it for ourselves and every generation after us.
So are you ready for that fight? Are you READY to go get it done?
Let’s go! Thank you!