Building Stewards Army is Focus of AFL-CIO Summit

More than 600 organizers and activists from unions, Jobs with Justice and other groups — including about 40 CWAers — are spending two days at the AFL-CIO's Organizing Summit in Washington, D.C., talking strategy and planning how to fight back to restore workers' rights in the United States. 

A key goal of the summit is to move forward on building the Stewards Army, a mobilization across the labor movement that will create a force of hundreds of thousands of activists who will stand together on jobs, health care, bargaining rights and other important fights for working families. 

The summit also is focused on the fight to win the Employee Free Choice Act, strategic organizing campaigns, building community-labor alliances, and globalization, among other issues.

The fight for the Employee Free Choice Act isn't only about organizing, as important as that is, CWA President Larry Cohen told the participants. "It's about our rights on the job. It's about bargaining rights and the squeeze on the middle class" that has hit working families hard, he said. The preamble to the National Labor Relations Act says that the purpose of the law is to promote collective bargaining, Cohen said. Today, "this is a farce."

Cohen called on every activist and every union to be a part of the Dec. 16 fight for justice at Goodyear Tire. "All of us need to mobilize at this Goodyear fight as if it is our own, because it is our own fight. We need corporate management to know that in every fight, the Stewards Army will be there. We need to build that together," he said.

"The election on Nov. 7 was a turning point for all of us. The second turning point wil be winning the Goodyear strike and the third turning point will be passing the Employee Free Choice Act in the House. We will continue building on each victory until we have justice in America again," Cohen said. Cohen heads the AFL-CIO Organizing Committee.

Participants marched to Capitol Hill for a rally on the Employee Free Choice Act, with top House and Senate leaders, including Sen. Edward Kennedy, who will head the labor committee in the new Senate and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who will chair the House labor committee.

Miller told the crowd that workers must mobilize as they haven't done for generations to win back bargaining and organizing rights. "We are going to ease the squeeze on the middle class and one of the most important ways to do that is by restoring the freedom of workers to have a voice at work," he said. "When workers have the opportunity to join a union, it makes a world of difference for them and their families."

Kennedy said that “History tells us that the best way to make sure that workers get their fair share is to give them a stronger voice, but shamefully America’s labor laws are too weak to prevent employers from resorting to illegal union-busting tactics to intimidate workers. That’s why Representative Miller and I are determined to protect every employee’s right to join a union and stop once and for all this continuing epidemic of bullying and intimidation.”