SEARCH
Workers Joining AFL-CIO Unions at Highest Rate in Two Generations |
 |
|
The highest priority of the union movement is to help more workers join unions and, in doing so, to open the doors for millions of Americans to enjoy the benefits of union membership. Despite the incessant anti-union efforts of the Bush administration and employers, the union movement is growing.
The AFL-CIO and its affiliates are working hard to change to organize and train a new generation of organizers—and those efforts are paying off. Workers are choosing to join unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO at the highest rate in two generations, the Organizing Department reported today at the Executive Council meeting in Washington, D.C.
According to the report, 560 organizers have gone through the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute training program this year. The department also is working with 15 affiliated unions to assist them in their “change to organize” programs, and our Center for Strategic Research is assisting in nine major organizing campaigns.
Between 2004 and 2006, according to documents filed with the U.S. Labor Department, the combined growth of AFL-CIO unions rose by 1.42 percent, a net gain of 136,000 members.
The organizing report cited the notable growth of several unions in net members, including AFSCME, which gained more than 120,000 members, the largest gain in the union movement. Some 56,000 workers became members of the Postal Workers, another 37,000 employees joined the Machinists, and nearly 66,000 entertainment workers chose the Screen Actors Guild.
Ten unions grew by more than 10 percent between 2004 and 2006, and the largest private-sector union victory in recent years came in 2005 and 2006 when 20,000 workers at Cingular Wireless joined the Communications Workers of America.
To continue growing, the Organizing Department will focus on five goals, according to its report to the Executive Council:
- Recruiting and training the best possible organizers.
- Helping affiliate unions increase their organizing capacity through strategic planning, assessing resource allocation and developing the political will to change the union’s culture through leadership training.
- Helping affiliates design and carry out large–scale campaigns.
- Changing the climate for organizing by passing the Employee Free Choice Act and other measures.
- Developing global strategies to provide the opportunity for more people to join unions, including hosting the first-ever global organizing summit in December.
In addition, the AFL-CIO is assisting workers in joining together where collective bargaining is not possible, through such innovative programs as Working America, the partnership with worker centers and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the report said.
9 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
What is a Union?
A poem by David G. Hurlburt© 1979
What is a Union, why it’s you and it’s me
When we all work together in true harmony
A chain’s only broken by its weakest link
We must all pull together, so no-one will sink
The power of out Union is ever so near
Stick close to our goal, a straight course we must steer
Look to your Union my sister and brother
An injury to you is an injury to another
A Union needs unity, a oneness that’s true
Equality and empathy are what we need too
Think like your brother, picture his needs
Now to build a great Union, you’re sowing the seeds
Now we can harvest the seeds we have sown
And show all the world how our Union has grown
But the fruit of our labors, the vintage wines
Are the contracts we settle, the members we sign
Another source of growth is youth. All us older farts need to know about music from Street Dogs, Black Eyed Peas, Dropkick Murphys and Whole Wheat Bread. We also need to export grade appropriate labor current events for grades 4 and up. And we need to say a union is a union irrespective of what our natinal leaders say to each other(this includes NEA as well the CTW folks) Joe Davenport AFSCME 1488
It would help, critically, to discontinue knee-jerk support for the Democratic Party. They have cease being the party of Roosevelt for more than a generation and takes Labor for granted. Indeed Bill Clinton expressed open contempt for labor stating (how true) that we’d all vote for Democrats anyway as we had nowhere else to go. That was his notorious “triangulation” strategy to woo Republican votes and gut union interests, yet he was right - labor supported him anyway. And now we have Hillary and there’s still no learning curve. When it comes to screwing the workers the only difference between the Bushites and Democrats is the level of hypocrisy. The Bushites don’t claim to support labor.
Organizing would be more successful if we can point to gains from working-class power not concessions, and by declaring our independence from the Democratic Party pro-business, pro-war platform. It’s long over due for a Labor Party that definitively represents workers’ interests (as in many other countries), and the AFL-CIO can and should go cold turkey and commit resources to this end.
We would
The working people are rising up and throwing off the yoke of oppression by not having our jobs sent to enemy foreign nations, by not hiring cheap illegal immigrant labor, by not sending factories to slave labor camps overseas. It is neccessary to have unions to support the survival of American workers. As cave17 pointed out, it is not the Democrat party to support as they have sold us out. We have to support the unions. The unions must very closely scrutinize each candidate and not by what party they represent.
cave17 - The unions endorse mostly Democrats, but being a Democrat doesn’t mean you’ll get the union support. In local municipal races, unions can make a big difference, by participating in campaigns. In Los Angeles, CTW and AFL-CIO affiliated unions work together, growing their political base, candidate by candidate, and today, many of the leading candidates are pro-labor, even competing against other pro-labor candidates. So, the unions have some choices about who to support, among a field of Democrats.
The only candidate I will support is the one who unconditionally guarantees complete and total border security at all costs, the deportation of ALL illegals and stringent, unyielding enforcement of ALL our immigration laws, without exception! Illegals are a blight on our naton. They need to be GONE. NOW!
Another bi partisan attack on the working people was in 1983, Congress voted to tax Social Security retirement. The House was strictly controlled by the Democrats 272 to 163, the Seante by Republicans 55 to45, the presidency under Ronald Reagan. There again is proof the attacks against American workers is initiated by the Congress of both parties. We have to look to individual candidates and run union members for office.
I can see why people say politicians are only out to further their own political agendas. I agree. But when you are left with the lesser of two evils so to speak, and given the fact that labor is supporting the democratic party, is it not time to oust the current leadership given their track record? The past twenty eight years have done nothing for labor but take American jobs out of the country. It has done nothing but allow the NLRB be hand picked by big business loving presidents. Same for the supreme court justices.
When will labor run someone for president?
STAND UP, FIGHT BACK
To jk
Of course your point regards local elections are well-taken. There are tactical reasons for voting in general and for pro-labor politicians and policies in particular. But from a strategic standpoint, we in the labor movement absolutely must disabuse ourselves of the Democratic Party addiction. There’s every reason to form our own political party and to restore working people’s voice in the political arena. Moreover, I believe if there’s any saving this republic it will have to be the entity that benefits the most from, and has historically led, the fight for true political and economic democracy - the working-class.