Resolution No. 3: All In

WHEREAS, Canada and the United States share a proud history of a strong middle class, economic security and living standards built on the productivity and solidarity of organized labor; and

WHEREAS, as USW members we are committed to the core principles that anyone who wants to work should have a job; that all workers and their families should live in dignity with health care and retirement security; that every worker – regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, nationality, disability, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation – should enjoy the freedom to form a union and bargain collectively; and that all workers should share equitably in a strong economy; and

WHEREAS, we recognize that our union is wholly committed to advancing workplace health, safety and environmental protections, retirement security, family supporting wages and more; and

WHEREAS, we emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic ready to use our collective voice to bargain record contracts, organize thousands of new members and maintain key workplace health and safety provisions; and

WHEREAS, in both the United States and Canada, it has fallen to us to defend our democracies, advance social and economic justice and give union members a strong voice – on the job and in our halls of government; and

WHEREAS, we continue to hold our elected leaders accountable to our priorities, including affordable health care, retirement security, and workers’ rights, while never backing away from protecting our core values; and

WHEREAS, greedy corporations sought to leverage the fallout from the pandemic to increase their profits, fueling inflation and exacerbating longstanding economic imbalances between the very rich and everyone else; and

WHEREAS, our union refused to let working families take the fall for higher prices, pushing back on executives who lined their own pockets long after the global economy stabilized, and negotiated strong wage increases and other protections across key USW sectors; and

WHEREAS, transformative investments in infrastructure and supply chains, partnered with worker-centered trade, provided the foundation for badly needed industrial policies, providing opportunities to grow our industries and build safer communities using union-made goods and services; and

WHEREAS, we will always fight for Buy American and Buy Canadian provisions to promote quality products that support fair labor standards and protect good-paying jobs, despite local authorities who make excuses for using foreign products for major infrastructure projects and procurement needs; and

WHEREAS, bad trade deals and the so-called free markets have left us vulnerable to foreign dumping and subsidization, putting American and Canadian jobs at risk, destabilizing our economies and further necessitating the diligent enforcement of trade laws and the development of new trade policies and trade remedy laws; and

WHEREAS, we believe that while the market is an effective way of creating and delivering products, citizens have certain social and economic rights that we must fight to maintain, including the right to form unions; and

WHEREAS, through our organizing efforts, we continue to extend the benefits of collective bargaining to more workers, empowering them to negotiate for their futures and build economic security for themselves and their families; and

WHEREAS, we take our values and vision to the bargaining table to build safer workplaces with fair wages, benefits and workplace rules. The collective action we take across sectors builds bargaining power, while departments like Strategic Campaigns help local unions face elevated bargaining challenges by honing their negotiating and advocacy skills. These factors combine to help us make gains that benefit union and non-union workers alike; and

WHEREAS, we prioritize clear and effective communication between our members as the bedrock of our solidarity while striving to share our stories far and wide in order to help combat dangerous misinformation and demagoguery; and

WHEREAS, through our union-wide education efforts, we provide the resources to arm members with the information and skills needed to confront challenges in their workplaces and communities while becoming stronger leaders to fight for a better future; and

WHEREAS, programs like Women of Steel, SOAR, Steel Pride, NextGen and Veterans of Steel build activism and demonstrate that there is a role for every member and every voice inside our union; and

WHEREAS, we remain committed to building the next generation of union members, providing mentorship and opportunities for young workers to find their voices; and

WHEREAS, legislative and political processes in Canada and the United States continually demand our attention and involvement and we can advance our members’ interests by working together across our leadership, staff, and members. We fight against bad trade deals and so-called “right-to-work” legislation, just as we fight for retirement security, anti-scab legislation, card check certification, stronger safety provisions and a guarantee that the voices of working families are heard in all aspects of government; and

WHEREAS, in the United States, our union demands that trade laws be enforced. We pursue innovative cases in many industrial sectors to defend our members’ jobs when they are threatened by illegal and unfair trade, initiating and winning major gains that have saved jobs in sectors ranging from steel to tire to paper; and

WHEREAS, in Canada we oppose bad trade deals and practices, including circumvention and dumping and have secured the right for unions to initiate unfair trade cases in Ottawa, because it is workers who ultimately suffer the consequences of unfair trade practices; and

WHEREAS, we utilize our education and activism networks, such as Rapid Response in the United States, to engage USW members in key legislative fights and to ensure that our members understand the policy implications of workplace issues; and

WHEREAS, we have expanded our influence by creating new organizations with key partners like the BlueGreen Alliance, Blue Green Canada and the Alliance for American Manufacturing. Our work in the policy arena is magnified through these relationships and has helped us become the leading voice in Washington and Ottawa for a clean energy economy and a revitalized manufacturing sector, helping secure our members’ jobs now and in the future; and

WHEREAS, as union members, we work globally for livable wages, safe working conditions and decent benefits in workplaces across the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. We use our collective strength, bargaining ability and international relationships, and we acknowledge that a threat to one is a threat to all; and

WHEREAS, we believe that our communities largely define who we are, and healthy communities develop when we care for each other, treat people fairly, keep them safe and help them achieve; and

WHEREAS, we rely on our diversity and inclusivity to make us a force greater than the sum of our individual parts; and

WHEREAS, we take on this challenge to preserve what the labor movement has fought for, what countless workers have died for and for what we believe our countries can become;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that:

1. We will hold nothing back when it comes to pursuing economic justice. We are all in this fight together as our union works to reduce inequality, bargain for family-supporting wages, and help all workers build better lives for themselves and their families.
2. We will help all workers who seek to organize across every sector of the economy, welcoming them into our union. We will continue to push for legislation that facilitates organizing so that our fellow workers, regardless of industry or demographic, can receive the well-documented benefits of a union contract while also increasing our bargaining power through increased density.
3. As a union, we will work to promote equity and social justice, refusing to let greedy corporations and the ultra-wealthy weaken us by turning us against each other. We know that we are strongest when we fight together, and we will remain fully committed to lifting each other up and keeping each other safe.
4. Our union will work in Canada and the United States to capitalize on the momentum we are seeing thanks to robust investments in our physical and social infrastructures. We will continue to advocate for industrial policies that pair these investments with strong guardrails so that through these initiatives, we are creating good jobs and respecting workers’ rights as together we build healthier communities.
5. We will always advocate for better health care and retirement security for all. Security and dignity in retirement and access to quality medical care are fundamental, universal rights, regardless of an individual’s economic circumstances.
6. As a union, we will continue to fight to ensure that all levels of government are properly financed and empowered to ensure quality public services and education; to provide effective regulation of our workplaces, marketplaces and economies; and to protect us from environmental degradation. Governments at all levels have important roles to play in providing essential services, defending the vulnerable, encouraging environmental sustainability, facilitating economic growth and ensuring a fair and just society. We must have a progressive tax structure in which corporations and the wealthy also pay their fair share.
7. Our union will support regulations on the financial sector and insist on corporate accountability. As long as our economic policy puts the interests of corporations before the interests of working people, corporate short-term profiteering and financial speculation will jeopardize our economic future.
8. Trade agreements must include enforceable protections for workers and the environment as well as prohibitions against child labor, forced labor, sweatshops, illegal subsidies, circumvention and other forms of unfair and illegal trade. We will fight to protect domestic jobs and eliminate tax incentives and loopholes that encourage corporations to invest abroad. Together, as a union, we will promote a global economy in which the rights of all workers and the environment are protected, trade is fair and balanced and trade agreements do not undermine the rights of sovereign governments or ignore the impact of globalization on workers and the environment.
9. We will foster a movement in which we all have a place, providing opportunities for workers to learn and grow, advancing our shared priorities and taking our union boldly into the future.