Approved Sept. 27, 2005

Our alliance is built on three guiding principles.

First, our highest priority must be to help millions more workers to unite with our movement if all working people are to start winning again for our families and our communities.

Second, the strength of working people depends on uniting everyone who does the same kind of work to set high standards in each industry on pay, health care, retirement, staffing, training, equal opportunity, and other issues.

Third, our movement must empower and unite today’s diverse workforce, including millions of people of color, immigrant workers, and working women.

Acting on these principles, we pledge to jointly carry out the largest organizing program in more than 50 years.

Our focus will be to help unite more than 44 million workers who work in jobs that will continue to provide vital services in our communities in the coming years – in transportation, distribution, retail, construction, leisure and hospitality, health care, property services, laundries, utilities, food production and processing, and other services.

To maximize our efforts, we will establish a Strategic Organizing Center that will
coordinate a program that combines each union’s existing organizing activities, joint campaigns by two or more unions, and new campaigns that are larger than any union could undertake. We will establish an Organizing Fund that will be used to launch large scale multi-union campaigns approved by the Leadership Council.

Responsibilities of the Center will include:

• Providing advice and assistance to make as effective as possible each union’s
  strategic plans to unite more workers in core industries, and to coordinate our
  affiliates’ activities so that they compliment one another.
• Advising and supporting major campaigns, including joint campaigns by multiple unions.
• Developing and spearheading campaigns in new or primarily nonunion industries, whole companies, and whole sectors or markets.
• Coordinating, both nationally and locally, the sharing of resources, staff, and relationships with community allies, elected public officials, and responsible employers.
• Maximizing the focus and effectiveness of our alliance’s political work to ensure that working people have the freedom to form a union without corporate intimidation or interference.
• Coordinating and assisting with global strategies to unite with unions and other allies in other countries to negotiate with multinational corporations to respect workers’ freedom to form unions and to raise living standards and working conditions instead of pursuing a worldwide race to the bottom.

At least 75 percent of our alliance’s resources will be dedicated to organizing through the work of the Strategic Organizing Center.

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