Posts tagged AFL-CIO
Teachers’ union AFT slams crypto market bill, warns of ‘profound risks’ for America’s retirement plans
December 11, 2025 // The American Federation of Teachers, the powerful labor union that represents 1.8 million members, is urging the Senate Banking Committee to reconsider its crypto market structure bill, the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, calling the proposed legislation “as irresponsible as it is reckless” in a letter exclusively obtained by CNBC. In the letter that AFT president Randi Weingarten sent to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) and Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), she wrote the union opposes the bill based on the “profound risks to the pensions of working families and the overall stability of the economy.”
Union support for immigration protests proves workers need freedom
December 4, 2025 // Yet while union leaders are fighting the president, union members are divided. More than 40% voted for Mr. Trump in November, and union members are increasingly a key part of Republican and Democratic coalitions. Yet even in cases where workers lean to the right, unions use their dues to fund liberal causes that have little to do with their members’ interests, including nationwide protests. Unions have heavily spent their members’ money to bus workers to protests, buy anti-Trump placards and foment disruption on city streets. Even when unions have organized press conferences to denounce the arrest of the SEIU California president, it cost money they took from their members, many of whom support Mr. Trump and his immigration crackdown
Get on the Job and Organize with Inside Organizer School
November 23, 2025 // On November 6, a panel of labor organizers local to the Twin Cities gathered with the IOS at the East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul, Minn. The conversation centered on Brisack’s book, Get on the Job and Organize: Standing up for a Better Workplace and a Better World, which was released in April. Packed with labor history, the book is about Brisack’s experience salting at Starbucks, but also about their experience as an external organizer for union campaigns at Nissan and Tesla. The conversation was not limited to salting. During the event, panelists connected wisdom from the book to their own experiences organizing different industries in Minnesota, and shared tips and stories with audience members about organizing in general.
Pro-union flyers appear in Starbucks headquarters as some corporate staff quietly support barista strikes
November 18, 2025 // Employees say the flyers have appeared in hallways and bathroom stalls across the Seattle building this week, while some corporate workers whisper support for the baristas on strike. The flyers first appeared just days before baristas launched a nationwide strike at dozens of stores in 40 cities to pressure the company to finalize their first union contract. The strike, which is the unionized baristas' fourth work stoppage in two years — and their third since Brian Niccol became CEO in September 2024 — began on Red Cup Day, an annual promotional event that offers customers a free reusable cup with their purchase and generates significant sales for the company.
Oklahoma state Rep. Forrest Bennett to resign as he takes AFL-CIO position
November 18, 2025 // Oklahoma State Representative Forrest Bennett announced he plans to resign from the Oklahoma legislature after being elected president of the Oklahoma State AFL-CIO on Friday.
Op-ed: Democrats Caved in the Shutdown Fight. Unions Let Them.
November 13, 2025 // The main rationale provided by AFGE president Everett Kelley was that his members were suffering economically from the shutdown. There’s no doubt that this hurt is very real, and I do not doubt the sincerity of Kelley’s commitment to his membership. But AFGE’s leadership could have decided to pressure Republicans rather than Democrats to end the shutdown. That was a political choice. Rank-and-file AFGE members this morning released an open letter calling on their national leadership to oppose the deal. As one rank-and-file AFGE member wrote to me last night, “Many of us are furious at AFGE leadership
Top labor groups break with federal union’s support of Republican measure to end shutdown
November 4, 2025 // But many of the top labor unions told ABC News that they continue to back the strategy taken up by Democrats, breaking with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents hundreds of thousands of federal workers losing out on pay and staring down the threat of layoffs. Many labor unions, a key bloc within the Democratic Party, support the push for an extension of Obamacare subsidies and remain eager to fight a president they view as an adversary of workers, some labor analysts and union officials said.
How are unions pushing back against Trump’s attacks on labor and layoffs?
October 21, 2025 // Unions are battling the administration in federal courtrooms nationwide, after filing dozens of lawsuits to try to halt attempts to shed hundreds of thousands of government employees, strip collective bargaining rights from over a million workers, and gut some federal agencies. On Wednesday, they made a significant breakthrough: Judge Susan Illston, of the US district court’s northern district of California, granted a temporary restraining order blocking Trump’s latest mass layoffs from the government shutdown.
Major federation of unions calls for ‘worker-centered AI’ future
October 15, 2025 // The AFL-CIO represents the UAW and dozens of other unions and wants more collective bargaining and state bills regulating AI.
NY sisters who own DQ franchise hit with $6M lawsuit for paying workers every 2 weeks — they helped change the loophole but it was too late for them
October 10, 2025 // New York's Frequency of Pay law (2) requires “manual workers” to receive their pay on a weekly basis. It’s a law that the sisters said they’d never heard of, which is why they paid their employees biweekly — a process that they said was never flagged by anyone, including during an audit conducted by the state’s Department of Labor. Robey told CBS that the lawsuit was “ridiculous,” adding, “we knew we paid every employee every dime that they were owed." But her sister noted that the former employee, who’d been laid off, “would say all the time, 'I'm gonna get you, I'm gonna get you,' and she did.”