The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a voluntary federation of 57 national and international labor unions.
The AFL-CIO union movement represents 11.5 million members, including 3 million members in Working America, its new community affiliate. We are teachers and taxi drivers, musicians and miners, firefighters and farm workers, bakers and bottlers, engineers and editors, pilots and public employees, doctors and nurses, painters and plumbers—and more.
The AFL-CIO was created in 1955 by the merger of the American
Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. In
2009, delegates to the 26th AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention elected Richard Trumka as President and Liz Shuler as Secretary-Treasurer. Arlene Holt Baker was re-elected as Executive Vice President.
Trumka, who was AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer from 1995-2009, replaced retiring AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Sweeney was elected in 1995 on a slate with Trumka and Linda Chavez-Thompson as Executive Vice President.
Since its founding, the AFL-CIO and its affiliate unions have been the single most effective force in America for enabling working people to build better lives and futures for our families.
