Well before the Sept. 11 national tragedy, the economic boom of the previous decade had begun losing steam after stock prices peaked in early 2000. And even during the economic high times, the benefits were not shared equally. While CEO pay and corporate profits soared, the income gap between America's least-paid and highest-earning workers hit an all-time high. Although the hot high-tech sector got a great deal of media attention, it wasn't alone in fueling corporate profits and the gap between CEOs and their employees: Corporate coffers also fattened with gains from privatization, deregulation and exporting work to countries with the lowest labor costs and weakest environmental protections.

These corporate quests were boosted by the new presidential administration and members of Congress hostile to working families' interests. First pushing through a tax cut for the rich that endangers critical safety nets for working families, they then began trying to deliver top priorities on corporate America's wish list, including Social Security privatization and international trade agreements blind to workers' and human rights.

The AFL-CIO employed a range of strategies to take back the economy—domestically and globally—for working families, including:P

• Worker education about how globalization of the economy and shrinking union density affect paychecks;
• High-road economic development efforts;
• Using our bargaining power;
• Programs to hold employers accountable to workers and communities, and to enable workers to have a greater voice in making sure their pension and other investments work in their interest;
• And a massive campaign to make the global economy work for working families everywhere.

By August 2001, the rate of job loss already was triple the 2000 rate. Then the Sept. 11 attacks on America sent the faltering economy into a tailspin. Within a month, employers had announced more than 400,000 layoffs—a toll that exceeded 600,000 by the beginning of November.

The union movement was uniquely suited to respond, with the tools in place to intervene in the economy on workers' behalf and with one-of-a-kind connections with employers, a community services network and government agencies. Immediately after the attacks, the AFL-CIO went to work as the clearinghouse for information about the effects on America's workers, responses by workers and their unions and resources to assist unions in their relief and recovery efforts. The federation collected and shared with union leaders daily updates on layoffs by sector, as well as information about the impact on individual communities and attempts by employers to take advantage of the disaster by demanding concessions and thwarting collective bargaining agreements. This information, and relentless advocacy by the unions of the AFL-CIO, also shaped debate on Capitol Hill about the need for legislation to assist jobless workers, not just their industries. The AFL-CIO and its affiliates urged passage of laws to secure extended unemployment benefits, subsidized health insurance and retraining for laid-off workers—and advocated for long-term measures that include increased investment in jobs and schools to enhance national security, address long unmet needs and create jobs.

Drawing on its three decades of experience in assisting unions and workers facing layoffs, the AFL-CIO's Working for America Institute rapidly became an important resource for unions and employers shaping a range of services for laid-off workers, from one-stop centers to get unemployment insurance benefits flowing to counseling, training and re-employment programs.

Today, the AFL-CIO and affiliate unions continue to fight the jobs crisis facing America's workers while also working to shape the domestic and global economies for the long term.

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Educating Members About Common Sense Economics

The AFL-CIO's Common Sense Economics program continues to educate union members about pocketbook issues that affect working families—a mission more important now than ever—with the goal of involving them in organizing, bargaining and political campaigns that strengthen the union movement.

Reflecting economic and political trends of the past two years, Common Sense Economics training increasingly has focused on the connection between workers' economic opportunities and the global economy, and the link between pocketbook concerns and the importance of becoming involved in the political process.

The Common Sense Economics program serves unions from the international to the local level. It has:

• Been integrated over the past two years by the Electrical Workers into its new member orientation course. The union now is using the program in most of its educational efforts. "By educating members about what's going on in today's economy, they're encouraged to get involved in not just representation and bargaining but also community service and political action," says IBEW 9th District International Representative Tim Dixon. "It's one of our most enthusiastically received classes."
• Trained union trainers to explain to members the connection between job loss and wage depression for American workers and multinational corporations that exploit foreign workers, as part of the AFL-CIO's Campaign for Global Justice. In March 2001, program staff trained trainers with Seattle community groups and 10 affiliate unions of the King County Labor Council. "That work enabled trainers to start educating their members and the community about the impact of globalization on jobs and communities' economic strength here at home," says Verlene Wilder, a King County Union Cities organizer and president of OPEIU Local 8 in Seattle. "This prepared us for the Campaign for Global Justice border action in April in Quebec calling for an end to the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement."
• Provided leaders attending the Utility Workers' 2001 regional education conferences in Rhode Island, Illinois, California, Ohio and Pennsylvania with the information to involve members in political action around the issue of deregulation in the energy industry.

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Taking the High Road in Economic Development

The global economy, and U.S. workers, suffer because too many employers have taken the low road: They have chosen to compete by moving jobs to countries with abusively low labor costs and few if any requirements for protecting workers or the environment. Working families and their unions stand for a high-road alternative that allows employers to compete on the basis of the skills and productivity of their workers and the quality of their products and services.

One of the union movement's most important tools in shaping a high-road economy is the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute, which partners with unions, government, employers and community groups to help create and sustain good jobs.

WAI actually helps high-road employers with union workforces compete with nonunion employers. In Las Vegas, for example, the institute assists HERE locals 165 and 226 with their Culinary and Hospitality Academy. In eight years, the academy has graduated 18,000 workers trained to work in unionized casino operations. "Today the institute is helping us to expand with both private and public money," says D. Taylor, Local 226 staff director.

WAI works to ensure workers can gain skills they need in a fast-changing economy. When Washington's D.C. General Hospital closed this year, more than 1,500 workers were laid off, 90 percent of whom belonged to unions, including AFSCME, AFGE and the unaffiliated D.C. Nurses Association. In addition to helping the unions assess, counsel and train workers, WAI created a multiunion hiring hall to place newly trained workers with unionized employers in industries ranging from health care to construction.

Another important aspect of WAI's work is monitoring, assessing and influencing government programs to make sure they help rather than harm workers. WAI successfully pressed for a federal tax on companies that import skilled foreign workers with H1-B visas instead of training U.S. workers. The institute then helped union training programs receive resulting funds from the U.S. Department of Labor—for example, $1.5 million to the CWA for high-tech training and nearly $600,000 to the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, AFSCME 1199C for nurse training.

"I couldn't have afforded to go to school full-time because I'm working. This program has been a godsend to me," says Latanya Keller, a NUHHCE, AFSCME 1199C member and certified nursing assistant now training to be a licensed practical nurse in Philadelphia.

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Using Our Bargaining Power

Collective bargaining defines unions' relationship with employers and is perhaps the most direct way unions influence members' well-being. The AFL-CIO has helped affiliates wield bargaining power by providing strategic, tactical and technical assistance in negotiations with such employers as General Electric, Boeing Co., the Seattle newspapers and the advertising industry struck by Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

Through the Strategic Approaches Committee, the AFL-CIO brings unions together to create comprehensive contract campaigns that capitalize on all possible sources of leverage and power, from pressure on managers and political leverage in the community to support and assistance from other unions with members employed at the same company.

To accomplish this task, the AFL-CIO's Corporate Affairs Department is developing a list of best bargaining-to-grow practices, techniques unions have used to gain pledges in contracts that promote organizing and help retain union membership, such as neutrality and card-check agreements and successorship language.

One contract struggle the AFL-CIO participated in—the fight for a contract at Boeing—shows what unions working together can accomplish.

Fed up with Boeing's demands for benefit concessions and wages 13 percent below market, 20,000 engineers in Seattle, members of the SPEEA/International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 2001, walked out last year in the largest white-collar strike in U.S. history. The entire union movement supported the 40-day strike: IAM members who also work at Boeing trained picket captains, Teamsters cooked hot breakfasts in a mobile kitchen and many unions provided food, picket line support and financial aid.

The IAM and the King County Labor Council galvanized public opinion in support of the strikers and nurtured community alliances. The AFL-CIO provided strategic and tactical aid and lobbied Federal Aviation Administration and Transportation Department officials to press for a settlement. And in the final stages of the negotiations, the strength of the 13 million members of the AFL-CIO helped spur a fair agreement. During the talks, unions were able to leverage power to gain a union security clause for every Boeing plant where SPEEA has members. SPEEA parlayed the strike victory into the largest National Labor Relations Board organizing victory in 2000 when 4,200 engineers in Wichita, Kan., voted to join the union.

To build on the lessons learned at Boeing and in other successful strategic collective bargaining actions, the AFL-CIO Organizing and Corporate Affairs departments prepared a Bargaining to Organize manual, which has been distributed widely throughout the union movement, and will develop a Bargaining to Grow manual on ways unions can use contracts to retain current membership and add new members.

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Holding Companies Accountable and Gaining a Voice in Capital

When workers invest their retirement savings in corporate stocks and ventures, they need to know their money is being used responsibly—for, not against, working families' interests. To assist them, the AFL-CIO's Capital Stewardship Program joins with union pension trustees to promote corporate accountability and secure benefit funds, sustainable long-term returns and the investment of worker capital in ventures that improve the lives of working families and their communities. In the past two years, it has responded to a sagging stock market and increasing economic globalization by fostering new projects and shareholder actions while building on previously initiated projects.

The program advocates "active ownership" and assists shareholder activism. Raising awareness about the negative effect of runaway executive compensation on union pension funds' value has taken on new importance during Wall Street's recent downturn. The Capital Stewardship Program's assistance yielded great success in April 2001, when the Electrical Workers and the New York State Common Retirement Fund brought a proposal to stop unilateral re-pricing of stock options that garnered an enormous 46 percent "yes" proxy vote. "We got letters from all kinds of people, saying they supported the proposal," recalls Jim Combs, IBEW director of employee benefits.

Also in April 2001, the program launched a campaign on the AFL-CIO's Executive PayWatch website, giving shareholder activists nearly 50 e-tools for reining in exorbitant CEO pay. PayWatch has remained among the AFL-CIO's most popular website features, with more than 30 million visits since its 1997 inception.

To boost management accountability, the Capital Stewardship Program annually publishes two reports for union pension trustees. The Investment Product Review examines how financial products marketed as "worker-friendly" measure up to their claims and hold up to the AFL-CIO Pension Committee's criteria for pro-worker investments. And the Key Votes Survey reviews the voting records of investment managers on targeted shareholder proposals that promote the interests of worker capital. In 2000, the average vote for union pension-friendly proposals was 73 percent, up from 65 percent in 2000.

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According to IUOE Central Pension Fund CEO Michael Fanning, the Key Votes Survey "gives us a sense of whether our current investment managers, as well as our potential ones, have a track record on proxy issues consistent with our proxy voting guidelines." Fanning says the Investment Product Review is "a wonderful product because it gathers experts from the union pension community to collectively bring their perspectives to the value of the various investment products Wall Street offers."

The program also helps workers intervene in corporate transactions. Working with CWA, it helped give union members who are AT&T shareholders a voice through their pension funds in the controversial proposal this year to break up AT&T. After a conference call with half of AT&T's institutional investors and filing a shareholder lawsuit, union pension trustees held a series of meetings with AT&T management to discuss AT&T's future.

Trustee education is another priority of the program, which re-launched a certificate program in July 2001 for union pension fund trustees to study issues ranging from fiduciary responsibility to active ownership. A joint effort by the AFL-CIO-supported Center for Working Capital and the George Meany Center for Labor Studies in Silver Spring, Md., the program now offers an updated curriculum, regional classes and coursework tailored to individual unions' special issues.

Because workers' capital is increasingly global, the program helped establish the Committee for International Cooperation on Workers' Capital at the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions/International Trade Secretariats/Trade Union Advisory Committee to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development meeting in Stockholm in late 1999. In April 2001, the program hosted the committee's Washington, D.C., meeting.

In 2000, a program-led alliance of unions, lawmakers and faith-based groups warned investors that a public offering of PetroChina, the Chinese government's flagship oil company, exposed them to financial risks because of problems that included workers' rights and environmental abuses. Ultimately, a New York Times headline announced, "China's No. 1 Oil Company Goes Public With Whimper: Protest Led by AFL-CIO Takes a Toll."

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Changing the Rules for the Global Economy

For the past 30 years, multinational corporations have used the global economy to attack workplace standards, weaken government regulations and cancel their responsibilities as partners with working families building healthy communities. By requiring poor countries with minimal financial resources to repay crippling debt, destroying jobs with privatization and rewarding regimes that abuse workers' and human rights, the international banks dominated by these multinationals have stunted sustainable growth and democracy while encouraging capital flight that destroys U.S. jobs. And the World Trade Organization and international trade agreements similar to the North American Free Trade Agreement have emerged to codify these many abuses.

In the face of this juggernaut, workers from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Puebla, Mexico, are speaking out through the AFL-CIO Global Fairness Campaign.

• The nearly 40,000 union, community, student and faith-based activists from around the world who gathered to protest the policies of the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in November 1999 dramatized for the first time the intensity of the opposition to trade policies that exclude workers' and human rights and environmental protections. The AFL-CIO organized and coordinated meetings with the world's union leaders, who described to the global activist community the damage done by multinationals' low-road policies.
• Building on the success of Seattle, a nearly 30,000-strong crowd of union members and other activists convened in Washington, D.C., in April 2000 for a massive Mobilization for Global Justice rally and march during meetings of international finance ministers and World Bank and International Monetary Fund representatives. Union activists demanded Congress refuse to grant China permanent normal trade relations status that would free it from an annual review of its workers' and human rights abuses. After the Mobilization for Global Justice week, which included a Jubilee 2000 rally calling for debt relief for developing nations, the education continued nationwide as nearly 30 state federations, local unions and constituency groups sponsored workshops on the global economy.
• In 2000, the AFL-CIO urged the International Labor Organization to launch a key tool for the global justice movement: a poster declaring the ILO's four core labor principles. Those principles, agreed upon by an ILO membership that includes international unions, governments and corporate leaders, are the right to organize and bargain collectively, the right to refuse forced labor, the right to reject child labor and the right to work free from discrimination. Launched in February 2001, the poster was used by unions including the IUE-CWA as an education and organizing tool: Its activists distributed posters to locals to post in plants to mobilize members around international labor rights issues and the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement fight, says IUE-CWA Research Director Douglas Meyer. The proposed FTAA would extend through most of the Western Hemisphere an agreement similar to NAFTA, which has destroyed more than 1 million American and Canadian jobs and lowered Mexican workers' wages.
• In April 2001, unions throughout the hemisphere organized 40,000 activists in a massive protest at the Quebec meeting of negotiators for the FTAA trade agreement. Hundreds of union activists also participated with Canadian union activists at border protests in New York and Washington State.
• As the global justice movement grows, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (the Solidarity Center) is on the front lines in more than 27 developing countries, coordinating with trade unions to enable workers to achieve sustainable, democratic development. From helping to eliminate child labor to fighting for the rights of women workers in export processing zones, the Solidarity Center seeks to ensure the world's workers have a voice in the future of global trade, investment and the practices of international financial institutions.

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As the U.S. economy slides toward recession and corporate-driven globalization continues to threaten workers' wages and rights worldwide, America's union movement and the workers we represent face profound challenges. The AFL-CIO and affiliate unions will be working on many fronts, from member education and shareholder activism to worker-friendly economic development and a massive Campaign for Global Fairness, to enhance the economic well-being of working families.