We’ll discuss labor-backed independent candidacies running both on and off the Democratic ballot line, what to do in areas where elections are completely dominated by Republicans, union political education in the face of bleak electoral choices, referendums on working-class issues, and lessons from the Labor Party of the 1990s.
It's a natural step from building shop floor power to building campaigns for policy change. As organizers, we're often already engaged in campaigns beyond the workplace. How can we apply democratic unionism in these campaigns? How can we use them to expand membership and empower members to lead? Learn from organizers who have translated workplace power into policy campaigns that expand workers' rights.
The murder of VA nurse and AFGE member Alex Pretti, during anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis, drew national attention to the role of federal workers in resistance to the Trump administration. This panel brings together VA caregivers and health care reform advocates to discuss union mobilization of vets within their own ranks, efforts to build cross-union unity among VA labor organizations currently stripped of bargaining rights, and “Save The VA” coalition-building.
Politics can feel exhausting and hopeless, but politicians hold many of the levers that could make our lives better. Hear how some unions are going all in at the local and state levels and chipping away at the changes workers need.
Zohran Mamdani won the mayorship in New York City promising free childcare, free buses, and a rent freeze. Now he's in office, childcare and the rent freeze are underway, and there’s a huge battle to tax the rich. Hear why a few brave unions backed him when he was a long shot, how city politics changed when he got in, and what else NYC unions and the working class could potentially win under a Zohran administration.
To shape a pro-worker economic future, we'll need industrial policy: coordinated goverment action to plan what our economy produces and how. Learn how some unions and community organizations are beginning to do this at the state and federal levels.
Public sector bargaining laws are highly uneven across the U.S.—from states with union shop to states with absolutely no bargaining or union recognition rights for public workers. Hear how fights to win back collective bargaining rights are reinvigorating unions and empowering members.
