LOS ANGELES —Organized labor, with its community allies, will “play heavily” in state gubernatorial and legislative races next year, its top two political operatives say. Briefing reporters Sept. 9 during the AFL-CIO Convention in Los Angeles, fed Political Committee Chair Lee Saunders and Political Director Michael Podhorzer explained that’s because workers found themselves under heavy attack since the 2010 by […]

New Labor Secretary Tom Perez virtually threw away his script at the AFL-CIO Convention in Los Angeles, with a stemwinding speech pledging worker protections, promising labor and the administration would do it together and with several blasts at corporate greed thrown in for good measure.

LOS ANGELES—The labor movement has made official what federation officers forecast for months: It’s opening itself to non-union workers, too. In resolutions and speeches at the AFL-CIO Convention in Los Angeles, the federation’s delegates decided organized labor would represent – and speak for – not just the organized workers in union locals, but the unorganized on the streets, in workers’ […]

On Sunday, September 8 at the opening of the AFL-CIO’s quadrennial convention in Los Angeles, President Diann Woodard Introduced Resolution 18, making the following statement: “Women may hold up half the sky, as the resolution states. But we don’t have half the pie. And that’s a fact despite more than a century of struggle and significant gains. Women still only […]

LOS ANGELES —AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is strongly defending his plans to include outside groups – environmentalists, civil rights groups, women’s rights advocates, immigrants’ groups and more – in the labor movement, despite criticism from many unions. A group of unions, led by the Building Trades, extremely upset by Trumka’s plans to bring other progressive groups into the labor movement, […]