The General Board of the Minnesota AFL-CIO passed the following resolution on June 16, 2020:
WHEREAS: The Minnesota AFL-CIO is the united labor movement of more than 300,000 union members dedicated to improving the lives of all working families and is an expression of the hopes and aspirations of the working people throughout our state, and
WHEREAS: As a labor organization, we recognize the need to improve the lives and increase power for working families, bring fairness and dignity to the workplace and secure social equity, and
WHEREAS: The Minnesota AFL-CIO is committed to mobilizing union members to support our causes while building a strong, diverse, free, and democratic labor movement, and
WHEREAS: Racism, white supremacy, and anti-blackness were systematically embedded in American society from our nation's founding when slavery was the dominant base of the economy and, despite historic and heroic struggles and progress to destroy its basis in law, continues to pervade our country’s social and economic life causing enormous harm and suffering to members of the Black community and other people of color, and
WHEREAS: Racism is a tool to divide working people and weaken our political and economic power with an aim to impose austerity, destroy unions and topple democratic institutions and rights, and
WHEREAS: The series of shocking incidents of deadly police violence against members of the Black community throughout the country have outraged people in America and across the globe and provoked a mass movement for reform of the American criminal justice system, and
WHEREAS: AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, in his June 3, 2020, speech in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, spoke about the urgent need “to dismantle the traditions of oppression in our workplaces, our health system, our housing system, our voting laws, our criminal justice system,” now, therefore be it
RESOLVED: That the Minnesota AFL-CIO commits itself to the important initiatives outlined by our national leadership, including the work of the Commission on Racial and Economic Justice, and commits itself to helping carry out this effort in every way possible, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the Minnesota AFL-CIO works to educate union members about the way race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and other differences impact the lives of our members and would-be members, and to build common understandings of how racial bias and discrimination divide working people and undermine our collective power, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the Minnesota AFL-CIO commits to dismantling systems of oppression, explicitly white supremacy, and anti-blackness, and achieving intersectional race and economic justice in our organization, our local unions, our workplaces, and across our labor movement, and to building power among union members and community allies to change the institutions and practices that prevent us from advancing a shared vision for a just, anti-racist and democratic economy that works for each of us, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the Minnesota AFL-CIO will seek justice for George Floyd and all who have died from police brutality, and the Minnesota AFL-CIO stands in solidarity with all people who are subjected to discrimination, oppression, indignity and inequity.