A Message from Labor Leadership Initiatives Director Kathleen Mulligan

Well, family, we knew this would be a bad time for working people, but it’s worse than we could have foreseen.  We are witnessing virulent attacks on racial justice and civil rights, women’s rights and LGBTQ rights, alongside the dismantling of government agencies established to protect workers and communities. DOGE and its aftereffects are hollowing out OSHA, FMCS and the NLRB. Meanwhile, working people are being squeezed from every angle. The economy is slowing down while prices continue to rise; tariffs will only intensify that situation. Companies are laying off workers, tourism is declining, and job creation is down. The current administration has directly attacked the unions that protect workers in these situations, cancelling AFGE union members’ contracts at the VA and threatening education unions, among others. Horrific immigration policies are exacerbating these challenges, terrorizing communities and families, taking workers out of critical economic sectors, and scaring tourists away. And the administration’s signature piece of legislation threatens access to healthcare for many working people, and will likely kill jobs in healthcare facilities. Authorities are militarizing our cities, and our rights are disappearing in real time. It is challenging to keep up with, let alone digest and make sense of, the daily combination of chaos and contempt for working people.

Our Labor Leadership Initiatives team is working to hold onto hope. We recognize how fortunate we are to convene shared learning opportunities alongside our union and worker center partners. When we graduate a ULI or NLLI class, we leave knowing that we have helped our participants build stronger relationships with each other, given them new skills to manage existing work and envision new realities and have worked through challenging conversations about how to build power in this climate. The transformations you experience in our programs transform us, too and remind us that things can turn around very quickly as long as we keep building a foundation for change in the movement. This summer, as part of our partnership with the Solidarity Center, we graduated a Global LLI cohort, and we were buoyed up by placing our challenges in the US alongside the challenges faced by unions and leaders from Asia, Africa, and Europe. Sharing our hardships allowed us to learn from the experiences in other places, including the fight to defeat apartheid in South Africa, where our final retreat convened, and ongoing partnerships between unions and civil society organizations to make good on the promises of multi-racial democracy.

How do we build power in this climate? While none of us has an easy answer to that question, we know we can find many possibilities together. Our leadership programs provide a space to grapple with the hard truths about our situations. We understand this is a moment to be courageous – to fight, not conciliate. We know that our unions must increase and improve member engagement, while continuing to grow. As a community, we need to be open to greater experimentation, including through partnerships that enable us to take on the breadth of attacks with fierce and indivisible coalitions.

We hope you are intentional about where you find hope and joy, and how you lead from the most courageous stance you can take. We support your leadership and vision for making change and building a more just and beautiful world that all working people deserve.

We have expanded our team this year, bringing on two new Senior Extension Associates who can support your work:

• Erica Iheme, most recently Co-Executive Director of Jobs to Move America, has a union organizing resume that has endowed her with incredible insights and wisdom. Erica will be working with the NLLI and supporting our programs with the NEA, while continuing to play an important role in supporting unions interested in building power in the South.
• Katie Gerken, who has been working as a consultant most recently but has deep roots in UNITE HERE and SEIU32BJ, will lead our Managing with Labor’s Values program. As a specialist in building strong member engagement programs, she will offer classes in our NYC office and customized organizational development for unions who want to strengthen their member engagement.

Please welcome these new team members and look for their impact on our programming in the coming months and years.

We’ve had a busy year, and we hope you’ll scan some of the updates on our activities below:

• ULI evaluation released
• ULI reunion
• ULI Graduation
• New Training on offer: Immigration in the Current Labor Economy

However, you are managing to stay hopeful. Please stay in touch with us and share the sources of hope and joy you are drawing on. Call on our team to support you as you build and grow your union and seek to implement the vision that brings all working people to a better place.

This year, the National Labor Leadership Initiative (NLLI) celebrates the graduation of its Year 11 cohort, leaders driving worker power across industries and communities.