The IBEW’s Liz Shuler made history again this week when she was reelected as president of the AFL-CIO at its quadrennial convention in Minneapolis.
“Liz started as an IBEW organizer. And at heart, she’s still an organizer today. She doesn’t bark orders. She builds relationships. She persuades. She listens. And she leads by example,” International President Kenneth W. Cooper said as he nominated Shuler from the convention floor, flanked by proud members of the IBEW delegation.
He hailed Shuler’s success growing the union movement and already meeting the promise she’d made in 2022 to organize 1 million new members within 10 years. She doubled down on that goal at this year’s convention, pledging to bring an additional 2 million workers into the labor movement in just five years.
“Relentless and unprecedented attacks from this administration and the billionaire class could have broken us,” Cooper said. “But because of Liz’s leadership, America’s labor movement emerged stronger, larger and more powerful than it has been in decades.
“Because of her leadership, this AFL-CIO welcomed seven new unions into the house of labor. Because of her leadership, politicians in both parties have gotten the message: Labor is done accepting lip service. We demand action.”
In 2022, Shuler was the first woman and first IBEW member elected to head the AFL-CIO. Her running mate both times, Fred Redmond, is the federation’s first Black secretary-treasurer.
An organizer for Portland, Ore., Local 125 in her early career, Shuler was just 28 when she was recruited to work on politics and legislation at the union’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.
Six years later, International President Edwin D. Hill asked her to be his executive assistant. She was the first woman in that role and first again when AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka chose her to run for secretary-treasurer on his ticket in 2008. The Executive Council appointed her president after Trumka’s sudden death in 2021, and she was elected the following June.
The daughter of an IBEW lineman who had grown up in poverty, Shuler reflected on her journey in her post-reelection speech on the convention’s opening day, June 7.
“My union story is like so many others, growing up in a working-class family that scraped to get by from paycheck to paycheck until our lives were changed by an IBEW apprenticeship,” she said. “Our family lived the union difference. Financial stability overnight, a career with skill and dignity for my dad, and a passion for organizing — that turned into a lifelong mission — for me.”
Hailing some of biggest and most diverse organizing victories the past four years, Shuler said, “We’ve won in places that people told us we never could: bus manufacturers in the Deep South; cannabis dispensaries; the Met in New York City; Trader Joe’s; Drunk Shakespeare; 27,000 educators and school support staff in Fairfax, Virginia — in the right-to-work South — winning a fight 47 years in the making.”
Shuler and Redmond’s many other accomplishments include creating the AFL-CIO Technology Institute and the State Federation AI Task Force to focus on artificial intelligence. The organizations are pushing a workers-first AI agenda across industries and fighting for related pro-worker legislation in Congress, legislatures and local governments.
In 2023, Shuler sat next to tech industry billionaires at a Capitol Hill meeting with senators and was riled by what she didn’t hear. “Those tech guys talked about their vision for the future, all the cool possibilities they saw. Does anyone want to guess the one word that never came out of their mouths? Workers.
“We’re not against technology if it makes our lives better and safer. We’re not anti-innovation,” she said. “What we are is anti-greed.”
Stressing the power of the ballot box, Shuler said the AFL-CIO is aggressively preparing for the 2026 and 2028 elections and all other opportunities to send pro-worker candidates to federal, state and local offices.
“There is a way to fight back, and it’s called the labor movement. Now it’s time to use that power to build an economy that actually works for working people,” she said.
“We need to get pro-worker candidates into office. But we can’t elect them if our elections are not fair and free. How much more do we need to see? They’re closing our polling sites, purging our voter rolls, destroying the Voting Rights Act, disenfranchising voters of color. The most powerful people in this country want to silence us.”
Instead, Shuler said, labor is roaring.
“In the last midterms, 14 million union members and their families hit the polls, in an election where literally a few thousand votes decided the future of our country. So this year, we’re going to turn out 16 million — 2 million more voters, the most ambitious program we’ve ever run.”
The AFL-CIO also plans to train 50,000 election protectors who will staff voter protection hotlines and be on hand at precincts to make sure voters’ rights aren’t violated.
Shuler said she was especially moved to be speaking in Minneapolis, where tens of thousands of working people turned out in icy weather to peacefully protest the abuses of federal agents, including the fatal shootings of two demonstrators in January.
“Our union siblings in Minneapolis and across Minnesota have been at the forefront of a nationwide fight against attacks on our communities. Their bravery and willingness to fight for what is right, even in the face of violence, represent what our movement has always been about,” Shuler said. “Our solidarity is critical.”
She urged delegates to imagine looking back on this moment in 20 years. “Ask ourselves, did we answer the call? Did we do the hard things, take risks, push ourselves as much as we could? Because we are the only institution, the only movement with the power to answer every challenge this country is facing right now.
“We bring people together across party lines. We check corporate power. We defend our democracy. We give people hope.”
Click here to read more about Liz Shuler and her IBEW journey in the August 2022 edition of The Electrical Worker.
