Diversity, Divisions, and Democrats: Day One of the AFL-CIO's 2013 Convention

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The AFL-CIO opened its quadrennial convention Sunday with discussions and resolutions on diversity, addresses by Senator Elizabeth Warren and White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, and signs of a coming floor fight over the federation’s relationship to other progressive groups.

“It’s a real live class war we find ourselves in as we meet here,” LA County Federation of Labor Executive Secretary-Treasurer Maria Elena Durazo told delegates from the fifty-seven unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Noting the corporations and Koch brothers arrayed against organized labor, Durazo paraphrased boxer Mike Tyson: “Everybody’s got a plan until I hit ‘em in the face.”

Diversity

Prior to the convention’s formal convening, about a thousand delegates, activists, and allies gathered Sunday morning for a mini-conference on inclusion in the labor movement. Approval of three resolutions regarding diversity also made up the main business of the convention’s opening session Sunday afternoon. In both venues, a slew of speakers emphasized twin themes. First, as AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler told delegates, that greater inclusion was not just “the right thing to do,” but rather, “for the labor movement to survive and thrive our leadership has to reflect the changing face of America.” And second, in the words of outgoing Executive Vice-President Arlene Holt Baker, that “We’ve come along away…but none of us will say we’ve come far enough.”

United Mineworkers of America President Cecil Roberts, who chaired the convention’s Credentials Committee, announced in the afternoon session that a record-high 46% of the convention’s delegates were women or people of color, up from 43% in 2009, and urged a standing ovation for the progress. (That figure means that 54% of this year’s delegates are white men; research by UC Berkeley Labor Policy Specialist Steven Pitts suggests that about a third of all union members are white men.)