Saunders Calls for Forging Labor Unity

by Kate Childs Graham  |  February 12, 2013

AFSCME President Lee Saunders welcomed (left to right) Communications Workers of America Pres. Larry Cohen, SEIU Pres. Mary Kay Henry, Building and Construction Trades Department (AFL-CIO) Pres. Sean McGarvey and American Federation of Teachers Pres. Randi Weingarten to the 2013 Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Khalid Naji-Allah)

Unity in the labor community is crucial at a time of relentless attacks from anti-worker politicians trying to cripple unions’ ability to organize new members and collectively bargain. That was the message Monday from Pres. Lee Saunders, who brought together leaders of the nation’s major unions during AFSCME’s Legislative Conference in Washington, DC.

Saunders welcomed American Federation of Teachers Pres. Randi Weingarten, Building and Construction Trades Department (AFL-CIO) Pres. Sean McGarvey, Communications Workers of America Pres. Larry Cohen and SEIU Pres. Mary Kay Henry for the panel discussion on labor unity.

In gathering, the union leaders sent a message that might have been unheard of just a few years earlier: Labor is unified and will strengthen ties to best fight its political opponents, on behalf of America’s working families.

Beginning in Wisconsin in early 2011, when Gov. Scott Walker unleashed a full-scale assault on collective bargaining, AFSCME brought together what had at times been discordant groups. That coalition building developed as similar attacks unfolded in Ohio, Michigan and across the country. 

On Monday, the union presidents spoke about the struggles their members face: threats to retirement security, unemployment, threats to collective bargaining and our broken immigration system. They acknowledged that stronger unity across the labor movement, while difficult to achieve, is critical to rebuilding the middle class. Saunders issued them a challenge to not let past history or differences of opinion sidetrack the effort.

And he challenged his own union’s members and leaders to carry the coalition-building effort home with them.

“AFSCME at every level needs to reach out and forge unity,” he said. “We will do the work of labor unity here at the national level, but we need you to replicate this unity at the state and local level. The challenges of 2011 and 2012 taught us valuable lessons about what it takes to win. Labor unity is an essential ingredient of success.”