Two million service and care workers are joining the nation’s largest labor federation, bringing total membership of the AFL-CIO to nearly 15 million. The AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announced on January 8th, 2025 that they are reuniting “to launch a new, long-term effort to make it easier for workers to win a voice on our jobs with their unions” and to “push back on union-busting and win for working-class families.”
“Workers know it’s better in a union, and together we are stronger in our organizing and bargaining fights because there is power in unity,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “CEOs and billionaires want nothing more than to see workers divided, but we’re standing here today with greater solidarity than ever to reach the 60 million Americans who say they’d join a union tomorrow if the laws allowed and to unrig our labor laws to guarantee every worker in America the basic right to organize on the job.”
“SEIU members are ready to unleash a new era of worker power, as millions of service and care workers unite with workers at the AFL-CIO to build our unions in every industry and every ZIP code,” said SEIU International President April Verrett. “Working people have been organizing our workplaces and communities to build a stronger economy and democracy. We are ready to stand up to union-busters at corporations and in government and rewrite the outdated, sexist, racist labor laws that hold us all back. We’re so proud to join together as nearly 15 million members to redouble our commitment to building a thriving, healthy future for working people.”
The move to reunify closes a chapter, in some ways, of American labor history, wrapping up the largely inconsequential Change to Win-era. Looking forward, the AFL-CIO is seeking to properly organize unorganized Americans and prepare to fend off attacks on working-class people from the corporate-friendly Trump administration. In the press release announcing the reunification, SEIU and the AFL-CIO highlighted strong support from Americans for unions, but unrelenting hatred, harassment and hostility from corporate overlords that prevents those same Americans from joining a union.
The labor community has been notoriously fractured for decades. In 2005, a coalition of seven unions separated from the AFL-CIO over disputes relating to properly funding organizing. Change to Win originally represented nearly five and a half million workers–a significant portion of the AFL-CIO’s total membership. The coalition, which included unions like the Service Employees, Teamsters, Carpenters, Laborers, United Farm Workers, Food and Commercial Workers, and UNITE-HERE, had serious qualms with the lack of investment in organizing.
Labor got extra weird for a bit in the early 2000s. Rumors of reaffiliation sprung up quickly. Talks of the AFL-CIO rebranding entirely floated. Internal fights bubbled up, some smoothed over and some far from it. That isn’t to say that this disagreements aren’t well founded, many of the core issues are things that need to be addressed. It also is far from the first time that labor has had issues with itself.
The Carpenters disaffiliated from Change to Win in summer of 2009 and haven’t rejoined the AFL-CIO or anyone else. By fall of 2009, UNITE HERE had reaffiliated with the AFL-CIO. LIUNA left in 2010 and rejoined the AFL-CIO. Change to Win rebranded itself as the Strategic Organizing Center (SOC) in 2011 and UFCW left for the AFL-CIO in 2013. That same year, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, (ILWU) who had been thrown out of the CIO for being supposedly too communist after World War II before joining back in 1988, left the AFL-CIO in 2013 and have stayed independent, largely over frustrations with other unions crossing into its jurisdiction.
The Teamsters, who now have 1.3 million members, left the Strategic Organizing Center following Sean O’Brien’s victory over Hoffa’s picked successor in 2022, but have not yet rejoined the AFL-CIO on a national level. The Teamsters do participate in the Building Trades across the country and are often affiliated at a state and local level with the AFL-CIO, like in Kentucky where the statewide joint council is affiliated with the Kentucky AFL-CIO or in Kansas City, where Teamsters Local 541 is a member of the Greater Kansas City Building & Construction Trades Council.
Today, the Strategic Organizing Center is less of an umbrella organization ala the AFL-CIO, and instead calls itself a “campaign organization working with unions, allies and frontline workers to develop strategies and implement tactics on transformational campaigns that confront corporate power.” According to their website, the SOC Leadership Council is made up of SEIU President April Verrett, United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero, and Communications Workers of America (CWA) President Claude Cummings Jr.. Notably, CWA is a member of both the AFL-CIO and SOC, which is presumably the same relationship that the SEIU will have with the SOC. Their announcement of reunification did not imply it would be leaving the SOC.
Similar in someways to the Teamsters, the National Education Association has a strong relationship with the AFL-CIO, despite being technically independent, and has joint AFT-NEA locals in some states.
The SEIU and the AFL-CIO are uniting to take on union-busting and secure the right of every worker to safely join with their co-workers in unions to raise wages and improve their jobs. Together, our united 15 million hardworking union members will:
Fight for new rules to strengthen the right to organize and collectively bargain and expand those rights to cover workers who currently lack them, to build worker power within individual workplaces or across employers and entire industries, whether at the local, state, or federal levels.
Hold elected leaders accountable for doing everything in their power to ensure that all workers can have good union jobs that pay us enough to live, with accessible, affordable, quality health care and the ability to retire with dignity.
Demand every leader take action to write more inclusive and stronger labor laws, raise wages, and make sure that every public dollar spent goes toward creating good union jobs to build thriving communities for workers of all races and ethnicities.
Support the efforts of workers across the nation to challenge union-busting corporations; drive multi-union, multi-sector organizing campaigns; coordinate strategy; maximize resources and capacity; and learn from their collective successes and challenges.
Now, the largest unions in the AFL-CIO are SEIU, AFT, and AFSCME and, interestingly, those unions are majority female and more diverse than most other unions. AFT and AFSCME both have roughly 1.75 million members. The largest Building Trades union is the IBEW.
Professor Ruth Milkman, of the City University of New York, once said that Change to Win was “labor’s best hope — maybe its only hope — for revitalization.” Many shared this belief. For a moment, it felt like a new day for labor.
Looking back, it is possible she was right, albeit in a way she did not expect. While Change to Win did not “win,” Americans now have high energy and approval for unions. A fire of change seems to have been lit in the house of labor. The Teamsters and UAW are working on national organizing campaigns against major corporations. The Building Trades have made strides in their relationships with women and minority communities. The AFL-CIO is pushing for legislation that reforms labor organizing. Unions, once again, seem to be coming to the understanding that they must organize their way to victory.
Tristin Amezcua-Hogan is the Editor of The Labor Beacon and a member of LIUNA Local 264. Tristin also serves as the Director of Communications for the Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO and the Chair of the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance.
Tristin grew up as the son of a UA Local 669 member in Tecumseh, KS and the great-nephew of George C. Amis, longtime leader of the United Rubberworkers (now USW Local 307) in Kansas. Growing up in rural Kansas as the child of teen parents, Tristin quickly came to appreciate the life-changing benefit of a union job.
Tristin and his partner, Rebeca Amezcua-Hogan, are residents of the Westside, Kansas City, MO's historic Mexican neighborhood. They are proud members of Kansas City's New Reform Temple.
