The leader of the largest union federation in the U.S. said they are gearing up to combat an anti-unionization push after a potential Republican takeover of Congress in the November elections.
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said the labor movement is poised to shift into a defensive stance.
“If things change in November, we have to recalibrate our strategy,” Ms. Shuler told Washington reporters at a breakfast meeting Thursday hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “Certainly, we will spend quite a bit of time on defense. I have a feeling where most of the gains that we made in this last Congress, there’ll be attempts to roll back.”
She described the last few years with Democrats in control of Washington as more of a “proactive posture,” especially with longtime union ally President Biden in the White House.
“He’s the most pro-union president, but we hold him accountable, too,” Ms. Shuler said. “We definitely will be making sure that we continue to press both our friends in office and those who haven’t stood by us.”
She also warned that Republicans oppose the unions at the risk of alienating blue-collar voters. She said Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who endorsed the unionization push by Amazon workers, was an example of how the GOP could break the grip wealthy corporations have on the party.
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“Folks like Marco Rubio have sounded the alarms and said this is a mistake if we think we’re going to leave the so-called blue-collar worker behind, and that we shouldn’t be making unions our enemies because a lot of the issues that working people care about should be issues that the Republican Party cares about,” Ms. Shuler said. “A lot of what the Republicans base their decisions on is corporations and the corporations’ demands and policies that they would like to see. Often those are anti-union.”
The AFL-CIO has its sights set on gaining one million new members over the next decade, or 100,000 per year. It currently boasts a membership of more than 12.5 million workers, down from its all-time high of nearly 20 million in 1979.
Overall, far fewer workers are a member of a labor union. The membership rate declined in 2021 to 10.3%, offsetting the previous year’s gains, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And yet, a Gallup poll this week showed the support for labor unions at its highest level since 1965 with 71% approval.
Ms. Shuler said that the labor movement is on the verge of a renaissance.
“Working people are waking up to their power,” she said. “They’re fed up, they’re fired up, they’re ready to make a change and they’re finally connecting the dots that the labor movement is the place to do that.”
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• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.
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