For Immediate Release
Contact: David Miller, 202-942-2285, 202-413-1775, davidmiller@liuna.org 

LIUNA to Re-Affiliate With the AFL-CIO

“Now More than Ever, Working People and Our Country Need a United Union Movement”

Washington, D.C. (August 15, 2010) – LIUNA – the Laborers’ International Union of North America – will re-affiliate with the AFL-CIO effective October 1^st following unanimous approval of the union’s General Executive Board, LIUNA General President Terry O’Sullivan said today.

“Now more than ever, working people and our country need a united union movement,” O’Sullivan said. “Despite the historic success of the 2008 federal elections, too much is not getting done on Capitol Hill. A united union movement can better focus Congress – and particularly the U.S. Senate – on helping to lead our nation, rather than being locked in inaction.”

O’Sullivan said the economy has decimated the finances of millions of working men and women.  In the construction industry alone, 2 million jobs have been lost in the current recession and nearly one in five construction workers are jobless – many going on a year.

LIUNA disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO in June 2006. At that time, the union expressed hope for an eventual reunification, continued to organize much of its political efforts through the AFL-CIO and has been engaged in ongoing discussions with the federation for some time.

O’Sullivan noted that LIUNA’s participation in Change to Win provided invaluable assets in building the union’s organizing and research efforts.

“The LIUNA of today is different from the one that left the AFL-CIO, and that’s in large part due to the strength of Change to Win’s Strategic Organizing Center,” he said. “Neither our ongoing organizing efforts in weatherization and residential construction – the biggest campaigns we have ever launched – would have been launched without Change to Win.”

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The half-million members of LIUNA – the Laborers’ International Union of North America – are on the forefront of the construction industry, a powerhouse of workers who are proud to build America.