AFL-CIO

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a voluntary federation of 56 national and international labor unions.

The AFL-CIO union movement represents 10.5 million members, including 2 million members in Working America, its new community affiliate. We are teachers and truck drivers, musicians and miners, firefighters and farm workers, bakers and bottlers, engineers and editors, pilots and public employees, doctors and nurses, painters and laborers—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 1995, the biennial convention elected President John J. Sweeney, Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson. They have been re-elected three times since then, most recently in 2005 for four-year terms. Chavez-Thompson retired in September 2007, and the AFL-CIO Executive Council elected Arlene Holt Baker 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.