The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) is the largest federation of unions in the United States. It is made up of 60 national and international unions, together representing more than 12 million active and retired workers. The AFL–CIO engages in substantial political spending and activism, typically in support of progressive and pro-labor policies.
John Joseph Sweeney was an American labor leader who served as president of the AFL–CIO from 1995 to 2009.
Andrew L. Stern is the former president of the Service Employees International Union, and now serves as its President Emeritus.
UNITE HERE is a labor union in the United States and Canada with roughly 300,000 active members. The union's members work predominantly in the hotel, food service, laundry, warehouse, and casino gaming industries. The union was formed in 2004 by the merger of Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE).
Katrina vanden Heuvel is an American editor and publisher. She is the publisher, part-owner, and former editor of the progressive magazine The Nation. She was the magazine's editor from 1995 to 2019, when she was succeeded by D. D. Guttenplan. She has frequently appeared as a commentator on political television programs. Vanden Heuvel is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a US nonprofit think tank. She is a recipient of the Norman Mailer Prize.
The Institute for Southern Studies is a non-profit media and research center based in Durham, North Carolina, advocating for progressive political and social causes in the Southern United States. Publishes include: Southern Exposure and Facing South (current)
Labor unions represent United States workers in many industries recognized under US labor law since the 1935 enactment of the National Labor Relations Act. Their activity today centers on collective bargaining over wages, benefits, and working conditions for their membership, and on representing their members in disputes with management over violations of contract provisions. Larger trade unions also typically engage in lobbying activities and electioneering at the state and federal level.
Kate Bronfenbrenner is the Director of Labor Education Research at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She is a leading authority on successful strategies in labor union organizing, and on the effects of outsourcing and offshoring on workers and worker rights.
William Jacobus vanden Heuvel was an American attorney, businessman, author and diplomat of Dutch descent. He was known for advising Robert F. Kennedy during the latter's campaigns for Senate in 1964 and President in 1968. Vanden Heuvel established the Roosevelt Institute in 1987. He was the father of longtime editor of The Nation magazine Katrina vanden Heuvel and actress Wendy vanden Heuvel, children from his marriage to author-editor Jean Stein, the daughter of MCA founder Jules C. Stein.
Worker centers are non-profit community-based mediating organizations that organize and provide support to communities of low wage workers who are not already members of a collective bargaining organization or have been legally excluded from coverage by U.S. labor laws. Many worker centers in the United States focus on immigrant and low-wage workers in sectors such as restaurant, construction, day labor and agriculture.
The Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA), was founded in 1947 as the Industrial Relations Research Association. LERA is an organization for professionals in industrial relations and human resources. Headquartered at the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, the organization has more than 3,000 members at the national level and in its local chapters. LERA is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that draws its members from the ranks of academia, management, labor and "neutrals".
The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan Latino organization affiliated with the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win federation. It was founded in 1972 to provide Latino trade union members in the United States with a more effective voice within the AFL-CIO, to encourage Latino participation in the democratic process, and to encourage the organization of Latino workers into labor unions.
The Roosevelt Institute's Network, formerly the "Roosevelt Institute Campus Network" and the "Roosevelt Institution", bills itself as the first student-run policy organization in the United States. It is a part of the Roosevelt Institute, an organization focused on carrying forward the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt.
The AFL–CIO Organizing Institute is a unit within the Organizing and Field Services Department of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. Founded in 1989, the OI serves as the primary training body for most organizers in the AFL–CIO and its member unions.
Frontlash was a non-profit organization founded in 1968 to help minority and young people register to vote and to engage in voter education. Initially sponsored by the AFL-CIO, the United States Youth Council, and the NAACP Youth Council, the AFL-CIO became the group's most important financial sponsor and essentially took over Frontlash in 1971, becoming the labor federation's outreach program to younger Americans. Frontlash folded in 1997.
The Global Labour University (GLU) is an international network of universities, trade unions, NGOs and the International Labour Organisation. It was initiated in 2002 and offers master's programs, academic certificate programs and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) on sustainable development, social justice, international labour standards and trade/labour unions, economic policies and global institutions.
Labor unions in the United States, since their early beginnings, have held various viewpoints on immigration. There were differences among the labor unions and occasionally opposition to contemporary majority opinions and public policies.
The Transportation Trades Department, AFL–CIO (TTD) is a constitutionally mandated department of the AFL–CIO. It was founded in February 1990 to provide AFL–CIO-affiliated unions whose members work in the transportation industry or who build transportation infrastructure a unified policy-making voice on transportation issues. TTD has 37 member unions as of October 2022.
The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. Originally created in 1935 as a committee within the American Federation of Labor (AFL) by John L. Lewis, a leader of the United Mine Workers (UMW), and called the Committee for Industrial Organization. Its name was changed in 1938 when it broke away from the AFL. It focused on organizing unskilled workers, who had been ignored by most of the AFL unions.
