Worker cooperatives promote the values of dignity, democratic control, educational and financial growth, and concern for the social health of the community. Interest in this model has been growing since the 2008 financial crisis, when community credit unions and the New England Cooperative Fund remained solvent and healthy even as more traditional banks and financial institutions went bankrupt. Learn the process to create worker cooperatives in any community or industry.
Does your union training look like an audience listening quietly to a speech? Would you rather get people laughing, sharing their own experiences, and strategizing together? "Popular education" is an approach that starts from what people already know about their lives, workplaces, and power. We'll try some participatory exercises and talk about how to adapt them to your issues and situations, whether it's a workshop at your delegate convention or a meeting in the breakroom.
This session will open with a short song by: Erin Murphy and Susan Rogers, DC Labor Chorus.
What is inflation, why is it important, and what can we do about it? As union members we have little control over prices, but we do have the power to bargain for pay that keeps up with the cost of living. We’ll cover the basics of inflation, including how it’s calculated and what we mean by good and bad inflation. The session will also equip organizers with strategies to win strong wage clauses that stay strong even as costs rise.
(Part of the Railroad Workers United convention, but open to all.) Hear how rail workers in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. are fighting for public ownership and worker control of critical rail infrastructure. In North America, railroading is dominated by corporate "Precision Scheduled Railroading,” stock buybacks, and mega-mergers, while in Britain rail service has been devastated by privatization and franchising, and the fight is on for re-nationalization. How can we build a national rail system that works for workers, passengers, shippers, and trackside communities?
Hong Kong unions and civil society were crushed in 2020, driving countless activists into jail or exile. A coup-from-above by the president of South Korea in 2024 was defeated by general strikes and months of mobilization from below. Japan's right-wing president broke with decades of demilitarized diplomacy. Learn about these profound challenges—not dissimilar to those we face in the U.S.—and how union-led responses are challenging authoritarianism.
Learn about the tricky web of health care profits and money-making schemes, clearly explained in a way you can break down for your fellow members. But it's not all doom and gloom: you'll also hear how health care unions are fighting for well-funded workplaces and better patient care.
Corporate profiteers and climate change are driving our cost of living out of control. We'll learn from organized workers leading and winning fights that promote affordable communities and a safer climate. Then we'll discuss how our own unions could lead, with contracts and coalitions, to bring down the cost of a good living.
The Trump administration has set its sights on unions in the federal sector, tearing up contracts covering hundreds of thousands of workers in one of the single largest attacks on collective bargaining rights ever seen in the U.S. Hear about what those attacks have meant for federal workers and the services they provide, and about how they have been organizing in response.
In the U.S. and across the world, working-class voters are increasingly being won over by right-wing populist appeals. What are some possible elements of a labor political program that can both win back workers from the forces of reaction, and force elected officials to address the needs of working people? Hear about initiatives including the Maine AFL-CIO’s campaign to develop a Contract with the Working Class and the Grassroots Power Project’s Solidarity Wins member-to-member political education program.
Hear how unions got in gear to participate in Minnesota's January 23 strike and economic blackout. How did the rapid-response networks, the defensive side of the fight, and the workers' movement, the offensive side, relate to each other and help build power? What was the interplay between the 2020 George Floyd Uprising and the resistance to ICE? How did public schools become hubs of resistance?
