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AFL-CIO

National Day Of Action: Federal Union Rank-And-Filers Protest Musk

February 25, 2025 Steve Early, Beyond Chron. , , , , , ,
In Washington, D.C., there’s now a ritual formula for labor gatherings outside a government office to protest the latest depredations of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) created by President Trump. Paid staffers from national union headquarters and the AFL-CIO arrive with neatly printed signs and approved messages. Worried federal workers mill about on their lunch hour, share the latest rumors, and hold the signs. PR consultants buttonhole the press and hand out media advisories. Often the news of day involves another lawsuit being filed against DOGE. Top union officials and their putative friends on Capitol Hill show up to deliver fiery rally rhetoric or leave statements of support in their wake.

You Have To Shake Up The Status Quo

January 11, 2025 Sarah Jaffe, In These Times. , , , ,
Marilyn Sneiderman has her baby pink Teamsters jacket framed on her living room wall. You’ve seen this kind of jacket before, if not in that color — satin with the big union logo on the back, the Teamster twin horse heads over a wagon wheel. But when Sneiderman was hired as the education director for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in the early 1990s, under the reform leadership of Ron Carey, she was one of few women in power. The pink jacket is, in a way, a symbol of her entire career in the labor movement. 

Politically Corrupt And Morally Bankrupt

December 27, 2024 Helen Mercer, Portside. , , , , ,
Jeff Schuhrke's book is a history of the collaboration between trade union leaders and the US state through the Cold War up until the 2000s. It provides a detailed account of the dealings of key figures in the leadership of the American Federation of Labour (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO) with the US political establishment and the CIA, earning the name “AFL-CIA.” Schuhrke exposes the labyrinth of personal contacts, committees, and associations through which the US government channelled funds and shaped labour organisations across the world.

What We Can Learn From The Cold War History Of The AFL-CIO

August 30, 2024 Isabela Escalona, Workday Magazine. , , , ,
Labor journalist and historian Jeff Schuhrke’s first book, Blue-Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade, dives into American labor unions’ role in Cold War-era interventions across Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and their lasting impacts today. Out September 24 from Verso Books, Blue-Collar Empire examines this history, and draws lessons for the present day. One of the main operations Schuhrke explores is the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), a partnership between the AFL-CIO and the CIA, intended to promote free trade unionism abroad. Under the guise of education, officials with AIFLD worked with the State Department and other Washington officials to surveil and squash radical worker movements abroad that they suspected to be communist—at times resulting in violence, repression of workers’ rights, and strengthening of right-wing dictatorships.

If The AFL-CIO Gets Away With A Vermont Purge, It Won’t Stop Here

June 27, 2024 Ellen Kaye, Katie Maurice, and Jeremy Rathbun, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Vermonters have a special relationship with direct participatory democracy. The first Tuesday of every March, in towns big and small, citizens gather in person to do the business of their community the old-fashioned way—face to face, one person, one vote. Everyone can have the floor to speak their opinion, from an elected officer to the worker who hauls the garbage. Everyone has the same rights. This type of governance is something that we in the Green Mountain State take seriously and hold dear to our hearts. And it is one of the founding principles of the United! slate of the Vermont State Labor Council.

How Reformers Doubled Vermont AFL-CIO Membership

May 23, 2024 Gordon Simmons, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
Transforming an existing union into a more democratic and member-run organization has often proven to be a daunting—though possible—task. The pressing need to revitalize organized labor in the U.S., however, depends on such movements. Beginning in 2017, a slate of reform-minded union activists won leadership offices in the Vermont state federation of labor, reinvigorating that organization. Within just a few years, the federation’s membership doubled. Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO, 2017-2023 is two-term president David Van Deusen’s participant-retelling of the emergence of the UNITED reform group.

The AFL-CIO Can Be Reformed, Locally And From The Bottom-Up!

February 15, 2024 Steve Early, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Changing the leadership, structure, or functioning of any U.S. labor organization is no easy task. Activists and experts have long argued about whether dysfunctional unions are best reformed from the top-down, bottom-up, or some mix of the two approaches.  For the past 65 years, the main locus of union democracy and reform struggles in the U.S. has been local unions, which hold leadership elections every three years and are closest to the membership. Thousands of rank-and-file workers have campaigned for more militant unionism by running for and winning local office.  Some have had the backing of national networks of like-minded dissidents, including Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) and Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), a TDU-inspired reform caucus within the United Auto Workers.

AFL-CIO’s Ceasefire Call Shows Power Of The Movement For Palestine

February 12, 2024 Otto Fors, Left Voice. , , , , ,
On Thursday, the AFL-CIO called for a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. The statement came after months of silence, during which the largest union federation in the United States had gone as far as to force a Washington-based labor council to remove its ceasefire resolution. The AFL-CIO’s call shows that the movement for Palestine and rank-and-file ceasefire organizing has forced labor to shift its position on the assault — and this movement must go further. The AFL-CIO’s statement comes after more than 28,000 Palestinians — 40 percent of whom are children — have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Vermont’s New AFL-CIO President Is A Democratic Socialist, Labor Reformer

December 27, 2023 Steve Early, Portside. , , , , ,
Unlike some local and national unions, the AFL-CIO’s state and local bodies rarely hold contested leadership elections with opposing slates offering alternative strategies for reviving the labor movement. Yet in Vermont, there have been two such contests for the state federation in the last four years, both producing a mandate for change. In 2019, a group of local union officers and staff members created a reform slate called “Vermont AFL-CIO United!” Fourteen of its candidates got elected — taking all the top officer jobs and forming a majority on the state labor council’s executive board. Their goal was to revitalize a moribund organization through membership education, mobilization, and direct action, plus greater independence from the Democratic Party.

Commemorating 50th Anniversary Of AFL-CIO Supported Chile Coup

September 3, 2023 Labor Education Project on AFL-CIO International Operations. , , ,
The Labor Education Project on AFL-CIO International Operations (LEPAIO), an international group of labor activists, scholars, and journalists will hold two actions to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the horrific 1973 military coup in Chile.  September 11, 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the coup that overthrew the democratically elected coalition government of Salvador Allende and ushered in a military dictatorship led by Army General Augusto Pinochet. The coup and subsequent brutal dictatorship were aided and supported by the US government of Richard Nixon and the AFL-CIO of George Meany.

It’s Time To Tap Into Labor’s Fortress Of Finance

October 27, 2022 Chris Bohner, Labor Notes. , , ,
Despite the recent upsurge in worker militancy, union membership and density have been declining for decades. But a close look at labor’s finances suggests that unions have the economic resources to potentially reverse this decline. Standard explanations for labor’s decline blame our grossly unfair labor laws, the full-scale corporate attack on organizing and collective bargaining, and economic trends including the decline of manufacturing. But labor is not a passive bystander. Unions have the resources to deploy to new organizing and growth. They have chosen to pursue a defensive financial strategy instead. Consider the National Education Association. Since 2010 its membership has declined by nearly 300,000—while its net assets more than doubled.

Challenging The AFL-CIO’s Labor Imperialism

July 11, 2022 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , , , , ,
A little known fact, even to those who work there, is that the AFL-CIO organizes in support of US imperialist policies that drive a global race to the bottom in wages and working conditions, negatively impacting US workers too. The AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center is one of the four core components of the National Endowment for Democracy. Clearing the FOG speaks with Kim Scipes, a co-founder of the new Labor Education Project on the AFL-CIO's International Operations (LEPAIO). Scipes describes the long history of labor imperialism and how unions are challenging it. Adrienne Pine provides a brief report on workers protesting the brutal labor practices of the State Department's main contractor, BL Harbert, building the US Embassy in Honduras.

AFL-CIO Complicit In Murder Of Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

June 26, 2022 Carol Lang, Covert Action Magazine. , , ,
Much of the world was horrified in early May when Shireen Abu Akleh, a renowned Al Jazeera reporter, was shot in the head by Israeli troops while on assignment in Jenin in the Occupied West Bank. Not long before, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) President Liz Shuler had been photographed with Labor Party Chair Merav Michaeli, a strong supporter of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, along with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). None of the three raised any outcry subsequently after Akleh was killed. Shuler moreover sent a letter to the San Francisco Labor Council stating that its delegates could not discuss a boycott of Israel. The AFL-CIO’s current support for Israel fits a long historical pattern.

The AFL-CIO’s Official New Goal: Continued Decline

June 20, 2022 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. , , ,
The single best measurement of the strength of labor unions is union density — the percentage of the total workforce that is unionized. Nothing makes the crushing decline of unions in America more intelligible than the fact that at their height in the mid-20th century, one in three workers was a union member, and today, scarcely one in 10 is. All of the downstream damages to the working class — lower relative wages, higher economic inequality, less political power — flow from this decline. We know, therefore, that increasing union density is the labor movement’s most pressing task. Thus, the AFL-CIO — America’s largest union coalition, representing the vast majority of our nation’s union members — unveiled, at its convention in Philadelphia, with much fanfare, a brand new formal goal: to see to it that union density keeps declining for the next decade.

AFL-CIO Blocks Debate On Union Democracy Reforms

June 16, 2022 Mike Elk, Pay Day Report. , , ,
Earlier today, many were unexpectedly locked out of the AFL-CIO convention after the Secret Service closed the doors for the arrival of President Joe Biden. The lockout infuriated activists and delegates who had arrived early to see Biden, but many also saw it as a metaphor for how people are being excluded from the convention as a whole. Shockingly, the AFL-CIO did not invite the Amazon Labor Union, since it’s an independent union and doesn’t belong to the AFL-CIO. Nor did the convention invite members of the SEIU-affiliated Starbucks Workers United. “It’s just petty,” one senior union official told Payday Report. “Starbucks and Amazon are two of the most exciting campaigns in recent memory, and we don’t even have anyone here from those campaigns to learn lessons from these campaigns.”
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