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?
Palestinian unions continue to ask workers of the world to end all complicity with Israel’s regime of apartheid and genocide. Since the founding of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement in 2005, unions and labor federations across the world have endorsed BDS as a key form of solidarity with Palestinian workers. Hear from unionists engaged in solidarity organizing, including a case study of divestment, a campaign to defend journalists, and grad workers speaking out on campus. You'll get concrete tactics and strategies to implement in your own union.
Are you tired of greedy corporations and executives taking and taking... and leaving us crumbs? This interactive workshop focuses on how billionaires and bosses try to divide working people so that we will fight each other instead of them, and how we can build a strong working-class movement to stand up to their money and power. You'll leave able to run similar political education workshops for members of your own union.
The strongest alliances go deeper than "you support us on this, we'll support you on that." Hear how unions and community groups are forging long-term ties based in shared values and strategy. Years of spadework have laid strong foundations for current fights to defend immigrants, oust ICE, defeat Islamophobia, and win a contract at Starbucks.
Unions are critical in the fight to push back authoritarianism and the erosion of our rights. Join us to learn the anti-authoritarian playbook and how to use our union power to defend democracy. From the Freedom Trainers program.
Attacks from the Trump administration on queer and trans people—including blows to gender-affirming health care, education, and legal gender recognition—are intertwined with efforts to erase the existence of immigrants in the U.S. and dismantle federal agencies and social safety nets. Hear how LGBTQ+ workers are involving their unions in these fights, organizing to protect the rights and dignity not just of queer and trans community, but of others as well.
Many of us avoid talking politics at work... but how can labor change the world if we can't even talk to each other about it? Do you have differences of opinion with your co-workers on immigration, war, who’s elected to run the country, you name it? Hear real stories and practical advice from workers who are finding common ground with their co-workers. Come share your stories and practice how these conversations can go better.
Hear how Puerto Rico’s working class is organizing in the face of authoritarianism to combat austerity and budget cuts that have made life more difficult. From the Trump administration’s repression and hateful rhetoric to the colonial trajectory of the Fiscal Control Board over the past 10 years, we’ll examine the various arenas where unionists have fought back, including struggles to overturn budget cuts, uphold sexual and reproductive rights, and defend migrants, and how we’ve built coalitions with feminists and environmentalists to fight for a better world.
Turn your pension fund from an inscrutable black box into a tool for organizing. We'll practice power-mapping your pension fund, how to begin to research your fund's investments, and how to talk to your fellow union members about using your pension investments to help, not harm.
Minnesota unions and community organizations seized the public imagination on January 23 with an economic blackout and 100,000-person march. Minnesotans have formed dense networks to patrol neighborhoods, feed the hungry, and train everyday people to scout for rampaging federal agents. Hear from union leaders about the lessons they learned by taking on the state and winning.
State repression isn't new for the labor movement, but the tone has shifted with the rhetoric of the current administration. Bosses are finding new ways to sow fear and distrust. Yet union activists are pushing back and getting stronger through organizing. Their experiences offer insight that can help us all prepare for the next wave of challenges.
Free trade deals have been a disaster for working people. Without a progressive, worker-centered vision for trade policy, Trump’s chaotic and corrupt approach to tariffs and trade will be the only game in town. Join us to discuss building a trade agenda that strengthens unions, fights corporate power, and offers a fair deal to working people around the world.
A huge portion of your tax money goes to the Pentagon. This money, used to wage unnecessary wars, could be spent instead on programs that support the real needs of workers. Besides taxes, we pay for excessive militarism in other ways: lost benefits, deaths, and trauma. Yet labor has often endorsed wars. How can we get our unions to endorse cuts to military spending? How can labor and anti-war veterans work together?
Unions can advance democracy, especially in authoritarian times and places. To do so, the unions must act not just as organizations representing a narrow sector of workers but as social movements with much wider aspirations. Mass strikes, even general strikes, are now on the progressive agenda. Fom Milan to Minneapolis, and from Seoul to San Juan, hear how these strikes have been organized and made politically potent, and how they're reviving working-class institutions.
Privatizing public schools and public colleges is a long-term goal of the right, including market fundamentalists, neoliberals, the religious right, and white nationalists.This participatory workshop will help school and campus workers recognize both covert and overt forms of privatization that are steadily replacing bargaining unit work and eroding worker autonomy, and provide case studies of how school and campus unions have begun to organize against privatization.
Are you tired of greedy corporations and executives taking and taking... and leaving us crumbs? This interactive workshop focuses on how billionaires and bosses try to divide working people so that we will fight each other instead of them, and how we can build a strong working-class movement to stand up to their money and power. You'll leave able to run similar political education workshops for members of your own union.
Big mergers and corporate consolidation are opportunities for companies to cash in big, but often threaten workers and consumers alike. Hear how unions in the railroad, grocery, health care, and news media industries have navigated mergers.
Nearly 1 million people in Minnesota joined a political strike January 23, demanding that ICE agents stop occupying their state. Tens of thousands turned out for May Day demonstrations across the country. And the United Auto Workers has put out a call for a May 1, 2028, national strike. The next leap is to prepare for open-ended and full workplace strikes, not one-day partial strikes, and to hit the big companies nationally rather than a handful of name-brands in one state. Hear how unions are building momentum towards contract alignments and possible large-scale strikes in 2028.
