AFL-CIO Executive Council Extends Solidarity Charters

by James Parks, Nov 14, 2006

Vowing to extend the unity that worked on the ground to elect a new Congress and to make real change for working families, the AFL-CIO Executive Council today approved extending the Solidarity Charter program until the end of 2008. The charters allow locals of the disaffiliated national unions to affiliate with AFL-CIO state federations and local labor councils.

Unity has paid off for working families. For example, Solidarity Charter unions participated in the AFL-CIO’s mobilization of union households to vote in last week’s historic election. As a result, working families won a huge victory, taking control of Congress away from Big Business and their conservative Republican backers.

According to the council resolution extending the charters:

In state after state, in community after community, local unions that would have not been able to participate in labor’s mobilization instead were key partners in a stunning set of labor-led victories. While not every local pulled their weight, it is clear that the participation of Solidarity Charter locals was critical in race after race.

Now the union movement must hold the newly elected leaders accountable and that also requires unity. By extending the charters, the council confirmed what many local and state union leaders are saying: The charters work because they allow working people to combine their strength and resources to help workers who want to form unions and advance the concerns of workers such as affordable health care, retirement security and increasing the minimum wage.

In the year since the Solidarity Charter program began, more than 1,300 local unions have re-affiliated with state federations, central labor councils and local councils of AFL-CIO trade departments and the AFL-CIO has issued more than 2,500 charters since the program was launched in August 2005.

Shar Knutson, president of the St. Paul (Minn.) AFL-CIO Trades and Labor Assembly, says the charters have benefited working families:

The charters allow us to continue to work together. Most of the unaffiliated locals have affiliated with us. They’ve been active in our political programs and our issue work. I’m glad they will continue to be with us.

Charles Flemming, president of the Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council, says this:

Solidarity charters are essential for us because they make it possible for some of the biggest unions in the state to affiliate.  . We’re in a “right- to-work” state. We can’t do what we need to do with all the unions. We have to have the community, the religious groups, everybody. People realize we need this and we have some good leaders who stepped up.    

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