AFL-CIO Releases Labor Movement Agenda

The following news release was issued by the MTD-affiliated AFL-CIO on June 23.

Following Constitutional Convention, AFL-CIO Releases Labor Movement’s Agenda to Build Worker Power, Fight Corporate Greed and Strengthen Democracy

The Package of Resolutions Includes Programmatic and Policy Priorities Unanimously Adopted by the Federation’s 65 Affiliated Unions

(Washington, D.C.)—The AFL-CIO released its programmatic and policy agenda for the next five years today, following the 30th AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention.

The resolutions, adopted unanimously by delegates of the 65 affiliated unions of the AFL-CIO, represent both a mission statement for the labor movement and a mandate for the AFL-CIO’s work. The federation committed to organize at least 2 million new members in the next five years and innovate strategies to organize around the labor laws that are rigged against workers. For the 2026 election, it will mobilize 16 million union voters and train 50,000 election protection volunteers to defend working people’s rights at the ballot box. And it will take on billionaires and tech CEOs to continue to build an economy that puts workers and our unions at the center, from health and safety and fair wages to artificial intelligence (AI) development and implementation that benefits working people from start to finish.

“Since our federation last convened four years ago, workers responded to rising costs, stagnating wages and an economy rigged for the rich with a tidal wave of organizing. They are winning seats at the table, giving working people a voice and challenging corporate power like never before,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “But at this moment, everything workers have organized and fought to win is in jeopardy. The AFL-CIO’s bold agenda is the mandate for the work ahead. Together, we’ll unite millions of workers to build power in unions, protect and strengthen our democracy, and provide a check on runaway corporate greed.”

The agenda, as laid out in the resolutions, is built to meet the moment in this economy and democracy. It includes priorities to ensure every worker who wants a union can join one; stand in solidarity with immigrant workers and the global labor movement; vigorously defend workers’ rights and freedoms in the face of attacks from billionaire CEOs, Congress and the Trump administration; and build a broader movement to create an economy that delivers for everyone, not just the wealthy and well-connected.

Those priorities are expanded upon in the following principal resolutions:

·  We Are the Organized Power of Working People:

• Bring at least 2 million more workers into unions in five years—twice as many new union members in half the amount of time as the goals set at the 2022 convention.
• Redouble support for legislation—including the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act—to reform our broken labor law system on the federal, state and local levels.
• Seek opportunities to align bargaining demands and contract expirations to amplify the power of collective action, including strikes, at the broadest possible level.
• Coordinate across the movement to challenge union-busting corporations; drive multi-union, multi-sector organizing campaigns; and leverage our power as a movement.

·  We Stand Up for One Another:

• Support the restoration and expansion of legal civil rights and workplace protections.
• Increase economic opportunity for all workers, especially in sectors dominated by women and people of color.
• Support access to gender-affirming health care and oppose discrimination in hiring, pay and working conditions.
• Support effective reforms that reduce prison and jail populations and oppose policies that increase criminalization and incarceration.

·  We Refuse to be Divided:

• Support a pathway to citizenship and an end to employer control over workers’ status.
• Oppose enforcement and spending in service of mass detention, deportation and termination of status combined with out-of-control U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, including ending racial profiling stops, warrantless arrests and other due process violations, and preventing the Department of Homeland Security from forcing local or state agencies to do the work of federal immigration enforcement.
• Rescind funding for the mass deportation agenda, including new private detention contracts or massive new detention facilities, and reallocate federal budget resources to fund urgent priorities that create good union jobs and lift working and living standards for working families.

·  We Want Democracy and Government That Works for All of Us:

• Defend rule by the people and the right to vote, including opposition to voter ID laws and gerrymandering that disproportionately disenfranchise workers, women, people with disabilities and communities of color.
• Rebuild and strengthen the rights of federal government workers, including restoring the bargaining rights and reinstating every canceled collective bargaining agreement.
• End corporate domination of our government and elections, including public financing of campaigns, limitations on individual contributions to candidates and parties, and public disclosure of political expenditures.
• Demand that no candidate for public office will earn our support without explicitly supporting and defending the right of working people to organize, collectively bargain and defend our contracts.

·  We Want a Decent Living for All:

• Support worker organizing and collective bargaining to secure higher pay and better benefits, and other government policies that raise wages.
• Curb corporate profiteering and end monopoly practices that drive up prices.
• Preserve and strengthen Social Security, pensions and disability benefits.
• Push for a fair tax system that includes taxing income from investments and capital gains; raises the corporate tax rate and charges a tax penalty on corporations that ship jobs overseas; and restores the top marginal tax rate to 39.6% with a millionaire surtax that increases progressively for the ultra-wealthy.

·  We Want Good Jobs Today and Tomorrow:

• Push for a worker-centered industrial policy, including negotiating the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement to address the offshoring of good union jobs and the weaponization of this threat to undermine workers’ ability to form a union and collectively bargain.
• Restore investments in and ensure resilience of critical energy projects and domestic supply chains, including manufacturing investments that spurred the construction industry, with good union jobs. Demand federal, state and local governments require that any public funds used for expanding U.S. manufacturing include mandatory participation in union-registered apprenticeship programs.
• Demand that data centers, infrastructure, and supply chains be built by and run on union labor; require data centers pay their fair share of costs and taxes; and ensure that working-class families and communities are protected and included every step of the way, including regulations over water and power use.
• Fight back against Big Tech billionaires recklessly unleashing untested and potentially dangerous AI technologies, and demand working people have a say in how and whether AI and other advanced technologies are developed and deployed.

·  We Want Healthy Lives and Safe Workplaces:

• Making health care a basic right by moving toward a single-payer system, like Medicare for All, that provides universal coverage using a social insurance model, while retaining the critical role of workers’ health plans.
• Improve the safety of health care and food manufacturing workers by ensuring safe staffing and scheduling, and strengthen whistleblower protections.
• Champion fully staffed and funded job safety agencies with the expertise to issue strong regulations and conduct critical research to reduce injury, illness and death from work.
• Defend against corporate attacks on protections from workplace hazards, including worker-related provisions in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency, Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board and other laws; safety and health standards; workers’ compensation; and workers’ rights.

·  We Want a Just and Peaceful World:

• Defend and strengthen labor rights enforcement tools and fight to preserve trade preference and adjustment assistance so workers are never treated as collateral damage of global economic policy.
• Hold corporations that profit from global trade accountable for respecting workers’ rights throughout their supply chains.
• Stand with workers and communities harmed by war, repression, coercion, and threats of genocide and democratic self-determination; advocate for an end to wars that threaten workers’ livelihoods, security and rights, including in Greenland, Iran, Lebanon, Sudan, Ukraine, Venezuela and elsewhere; and ensure that the sovereignty of close allies like Canada is respected.
• In Gaza, we demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire; full, safe and sustained humanitarian access; a halt to arms transfers that may facilitate violations of international law by all parties; and a credible political process grounded in international law and U.N. resolutions to achieve a just and lasting peace based on a two-state solution.

Additional resolutions included the condemnation of Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s abandonment of her promises to protect the union rights of public workers; support for protections for union jobs against anti-competitive corporate behavior; the condemnation of efforts to privatize, downsize or dismantle the Department of Veterans Affairs; support for federal tax incentives to increase American production and opportunities for film and television workers; and support for AFT’s boycott of Target and commitment to shop locally.

The full list of adopted resolutions from the 2026 AFL-CIO Convention can be found here.