The BMWE is one union that doesn’t need to be convinced. The delegates to the Grand Lodge Convention established an Organizing Department because they recognized how vitally important it is for the BMWE to grow. Now that the latest bargaining round is essentially completed, increased resources have been given to make the BMWE Organizing Department fully functional.

Organizing is the first of four strategic goals that the Executive Council approved along with a statement of mission that set the direction for the AFL-CIO for the coming years. For each of the four strategic goals, a set of specific objectives has been identified and an overall budget developed. This reordering of priorities has reinvigorated the AFL-CIO and prepared it to be a primary leader of the labor movement into the 21st Century.

Mission and Goals of the AFL-CIO

The mission of the AFL-CIO is to improve the lives of working families--to bring economic justice to the workplace and social justice to our nation. To accomplish this mission we will build and change the American labor movement.

We will build a broad movement of American workers by organizing workers into unions.
We will recruit and train the next generation of organizers, mass the resources needed to organize and create the strategies to win organizing campaigns and union contracts. We will create a broad understanding of the need to organize among our members, our leadership and among unorganized workers. We will lead the labor movement in these efforts.

We will build a strong political voice for workers in our nation.
We will fight for an agenda for working families at all levels of government. We will empower state federations. We will build a broad progressive coalition that speaks out for social and economic justice. We will create a political force within the labor movement that will empower workers and speak forcefully on the public issues that affect our lives.

We will change our unions to provide a new voice to workers in a changing economy.
We will speak for working people in the global economy, in the industries in which we are employed, in the firms where we work, and on the job everyday. We will transform the role of the union from an organization that focuses on a member’s contract to one that gives workers a say in all the decisions that affect our working lives--from capital investments, to the quality of our products and services, to how we organize our work.

We will change our labor movement by creating a new voice for workers in our communities.
We will make the voices of working families heard across our nation and in our neighborhoods. We will create vibrant community labor councils that reach out to workers at the local level. We will strengthen the ties of labor to our allies. We will speak out in effective and creative ways on behalf of all working Americans.

Building A Movement of American Workers

1. The AFL-CIO will promote a movement-wide understanding that organizing is the most important of our missions and is central to our success. The officers will encourage national unions and local unions to greatly expand organizing and spend at least 30 percent of their resources on organizing by the year 2000. We will model our own structure and operations to reflect this goal. The officers will speak out and engage in public actions supporting organizing campaigns. We will recognize and honor unions that expand their organizing efforts as well as individual union organizers. All union staff should participate in organizing as we create a unity of purpose as strong as in the 1996 political campaign. The Elected Leader Taskforce will be extended to 200 local union leaders. We will hold 16 regional organizing conventions. Through our economics education program, we will create the tools to educate union members about the need to organize. A new program reaching out to women workers will be initiated. Union Summer 1997 will seek to inspire a new generation of union activists.

2. The federation will launch a highly visible campaign to provide broader public support for unions and workers’ rights, with both an education and an action component. We will educate the public about the need for unions and the difficulties that workers have in forming unions, and act directly through mass actions and other strategies to defend and assist workers seeking to exercise their right to form a union. The campaign will have no immediate legislative component, but it will underscore the problems with the existing legal environment and lay the groundwork for a labor law reform effort.

3. The AFL-CIO Organizing Institute’s recruitment and training program will be expanded to recruit, train and place new organizers in 1997. The training programs will also seek to provide more highly skilled, experienced organizers and campaign managers capable of organizing on a large scale.

4. The federation will target a small number of key industries and national unions to develop industry focused strategic organizing plans, with support from the Organizing Fund. We will also provide ongoing technical assistance to national unions in their organizing programs.

5. Within certain geographic areas the AFL-CIO will develop strategic organizing plans and organizing capacity in cooperation with state federations, central labor councils and local unions. A small number of state organizing plans will be developed to provide a blueprint for organizing goals and activities and address the resources required to undertake such plans. A "Union Cities" program will encourage the development of organizing capacity and activity at the local level. A small number of locally based cooperative organizing campaigns will be developed to further this effort. The federation will allocate part of its Organizing Fund to support such efforts with training, media, strategic research, legal strategies and community outreach.