With tens of millions of claimed members, the AFL-CIO is the largest union organization in the United States. But with the political, financial and organizational power to match, AFL-CIO is more than just a union. Here are the keys to understanding the AFL-CIO.
AFL-CIO has over 12.5 million members
The AFL-CIO began as two separate organizations, the American Federation of Labor, founded in 1886 to represent craft unions, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, founded in 1935 in a split from the AFL to focus on industrial unions. The two groups remained rivals for years until merging in 1955.
As a labor federation, the AFL-CIO acts as an umbrella organization made up of dozens of large, independent unions across many industries and professions, from steel and autoworkers to teachers and journalists. In addition to organizing and representing workers, the AFL-CIO also assists in worker training, boasting that it operates “the largest training network outside the U.S. military.”
Richard Trumka has served as the AFL-CIO’s president since 2009
Trumka grew up in a union mine worker family, working in the mines himself before attending college and law school. Trumka worked as a staff attorney for the United Mine Workers of America, becoming the union’s youngest-ever president at age 33. He was elected as secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO in 1995, spending 14 years at that post before ascending to the federation’s presidency.
Trumka was seen early in his time as president as an aggressive “old school" labor leader. He has upped the group’s political activity and campaign spending, with more than $10 million in combined contributions and outside spending in 2020 at the time of this writing, almost entirely to Democrats, which has led to criticism. A 2019 story from Splinter cited numerous former AFL-CIO leaders who see Trumka as obsessed with maintaining his own power while simultaneously ignoring efforts to organize workers or push policies that could help expand union membership.
Some of the nation’s largest unions are in AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO member unions span a vast array of professions and industries. Two of the nation’s five largest independent unions are members of the AFL-CIO: the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have a combined membership total of some 3 million workers.
Other big members of AFL-CIO-affiliated unions are the United Auto Workers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and the Communication Workers of America. The AFL-CIO also counts the NFL Players’ Association as a member, as well as the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA).
Wait… police unions?
Yes, police unions are members of the AFL-CIO. And yes, this has led to a fair bit of controversy for the group as of late. Trumka, the AFL-CIO president, has largely tried to avoid criticizing law enforcement or police unions directly (for many campaigns that seek to reform, defund or abolish police departments, police unions are seen as a direct adversary, and a powerful one).
In August 2020, the California Labor Federation, a local council of the AFL-CIO, issued a resolution stating their intent to disassociate unions that perpetuate “oppression, authoritarianism, and cruelty,” specifically citing police and border control unions as guilty parties. Labor journalist Kim Kelly has called the AFL-CIO’s continued association with police unions “untenable,” and cited the AFL-CIO’s history of disaffiliating corrupt unions as a precedent to drop the IUPA.
Like everyone in labor, AFL-CIO faces an unclear future
With the 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME that public sector unions could not compel employees to pay dues, organized labor faces one of its greatest individual challenges in decades. The Trump years have left the federal judiciary stocked with conservative, anti-union judges, a problem to which there is no quick solution (at least not one likely to be pursued by a Biden administration).
The AFL-CIO will likely see a membership drop in the short term, but smart organizing and policy advocacy could lead to long-term expansion. One bright spot for the AFL-CIO is the Writer’s Guild of America East, whose growing numbers are an example of a rise in union organization among white-collar professionals like journalists and nonprofit workers. In the early Obama years, Congress tried and narrowly failed to pass a version of card check, a policy that would streamline union drives and could feasibly double union membership in America. Under a Biden administration, this policy could be on the table for unions yet again.
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