AFSCME 3090 Members and Friends,

I’ve recently returned from serving as an alternate delegate to the AFL-CIO Convention in Chicago. AFSCME, the national union to which our local belongs, is a proud member of the umbrella organization that has represented organized labor for the last 50 years. AFSCME firmly believes in the AFL-CIO and its principles of worker power, real unity, real change and democratic decision-making.

As you may have seen in recent news reports, a few labor unions (SEIU, the Teamsters and UFCW) decided to leave the AFL-CIO and made their announcements around the time of the convention. These unions and a few that, for the moment, remain in the federation, called for changes in the AFL-CIO.

For more than a year, we engaged in a spirited debate over what would reinvigorate the labor movement and best serve our country’s working families. AFL-CIO President Sweeney, working with all the Federation’s member unions, put forth a comprehensive package of reforms to dramatically step up organizing, create strategic committees to unite workers and their unions in similar industries, and create year-round member education and mobilization programs to focus on local and issue campaigns, not just national elections.

Despite resolving virtually all of the differences with the now-disaffiliated unions, it ultimately came down to a power struggle between those other unions and the AFL-CIO leadership. Those unions made it clear they did not want John Sweeney to remain AFL-CIO President, but they were unwilling to nominate anyone else. Unable to muster the necessary votes, they chose instead to disaffiliate. No longer bound by the Federation’s rules of mutual cooperation and respect, they are trying to raid members of other unions, including AFSCME affiliates.

What does this mean for us? AFSCME remains committed to real unity. Only by standing together can we serve the working families we represent.

We must continue to organize the unorganized, building on the 250,000 public and private sector workers we’ve organized in the last five years. We must also make our union as strong as it can be at every level. That means we need you – because you are the union.

Let us know if you have questions or concerns – whether about the work site, your union, the larger labor movement or political issues. Keep up to date on issues affecting you: visit this web site, come to membership meetings, participate in work-site visits, train to be a shop steward, get to know your business representative and Executive Board member. Together we will ensure that AFSCME and the AFL-CIO grow our membership, build worker power and win real victories for working families.

In solidarity,
Alice Goff