AFL-CIO Raises Dues to Collect $10 Million to Organize 100,000 Workers

The AFL-CIO is raising $10 million per year by increasing membership fees so it can organize 1 million new members.

Union organizing ran rampant in 2022. Nearly 300,000 people across the US voted to join a union. This is way more than in previous years. Unions were able to navigate new industries like architects, video game creators, bank employees, doctors, museum workers. And, as everyone knows, Starbucks and Amazon finally succumbed to union organizing.

The AFL-CIO is capitalizing on this trend. For the first time in nearly 20 years, the AFL-CIO is raising membership fees. The increased fees will generate an extra $10 million per year that the union will use exclusively for additional union organizing.

The AFL-CIO hopes to increase its membership by 100,000 people per year as a result of the increased revenue. This is the first step the newly elected AFL-CIO president, Liz Shuler, is taking to make good on her campaign promise of organizing 1,000,000 people in the next 10 years.

The money, per the AFL-CIO, will put more organizers on the ground, will be funneled to unions engaged in difficult organizing campaigns, and will support research and collaboration among unions.

Shuler’s 1 million workers campaign promise will increase total union membership in the US by 7% (not accounting for attrition). This would have been unheard of a few years ago.

But unions gained nearly 300,000 new members in 2022, public support for unions is at a 50-year high, and the NLRB is making it as easy as ever to join a union.

So, getting 100,000 new members for the group of 58 unions that make up the AFL-CIO may be more realistic than it appears at first glance.

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