The AFL-CIO held its 30th national convention June 7-10 in Minneapolis. Among the highlights, delegates re-elected incumbent leadership and passed a resolution pledging to bring 2 million more workers into unions by 2032.
The AFL-CIO is a federation of 65 unions that total 9.8 million members in all. (In its latest annual disclosure to the Department of Labor, the AFL-CIO reported 14.8 million members, but that figure includes just under 5 million who signed up to be members of Working America, the AFL-CIO’s 22-year-old community and political organizing affiliate; those individuals aren’t represented by a collective bargaining agreement, aren’t required to pay dues, and don’t consider themselves union members.)
The AFL-CIO is the premier coordinating body of organized labor in the United States, coordinating union political efforts, providing training, and promoting best practices. It was formed in 1955 from the merger of the AFL and CIO labor federations. Its conventions were held every two years until 2001, when they moved to every four years.
At this year’s convention, Liz Shuler and Fred Redmond ran unopposed for president and secretary-treasurer respectively, and so did the federation’s 55 vice presidents; all terms of office are four years.
Shuler is an Oregon native and the daughter of a PGE electrical lineman. Her involvement with the union movement started with a failed campaign to organize PGE clerical workers. She was then hired as an organizer and lobbyist for IBEW Local 125 in Portland and later joined the staff of the IBEW international. In 2009 she won election to serve as AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, the federation’s number two office, serving alongside then-president Richard Trumka. She became president after Trumka’s death in 2021, and ran unopposed for re-election in 2022, with Redmond as her running mate, also unopposed.
Redmond got his start as a member of the United Steelworkers (USW) working at Reynolds Metal Company in Chicago. He served as local president and then as international vice president at USW before becoming AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer.
In the last four years, the AFL-CIO has grown by 2.4 million members thanks mostly to the re-affiliation of 2-million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the addition of seven smaller unions, most notably of professional athletes. The union share of the U.S. workforce overall has stayed about the same, dropping from 10.1% in 2022 to 10.0% in 2025. It’s estimated there are about 14.7 million union members in the United States in total, and two-thirds of those are in unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO. The AFL-CIO doesn’t organize workers directly but tries to support organizing by affiliated unions.
Besides the officer elections on Day 1, much of the convention consisted of speeches and panel discussions, but delegates also ratified without debate a series of resolutions that set official AFL-CIO policy. Those included:
- Resolution 2, pledging to initiate a mass training program to provide basic organizing skills, tactics and strategy to working people who want to organize; and to grow unions by at least 2 million workers by 2032
- Resolution 3, committing to dismantle systemic racial- and gender-based barriers to employment, prioritize the fight for pay equity especially for women of color, support access to gender-affirming health care, and center the voices of Black, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, Latino, LGBTQIA+, indigenous, immigrant and women workers
- Resolution 4, demanding a pathway to citizenship for immigrant workers regardless of legal status; and calling on Congress to rescind funding for mass deportations
- Resolution 25, calling on state and federal regulators to address anti-competitive mega-mergers between major employers
- Resolution 26, opposing electronic shelf labels and so-called “surveillance pricing” by grocery retailers
