AFL-CIO ACTS TO BOOST ROLE OF REGIONAL COUNCILS.Byline: Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. The AFL-CIO AFL-CIO: see American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. AFL-CIO in full American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations U.S. launched a program Thursday Thursday: see week. designed to increase the community involvement of regional and local labor councils while expanding grass-roots recruiting. The federation's executive council also approved a pilot program to burnish labor's public image with television ads targeted at cities where grass-roots organizing is at its strongest. The ``Union Cities'' plan provides an eight-step program to increase the role of the 600 state and local federation councils, which in many cases have become bureaucracies with minimal contact with rank-and-file union members. The new program encourages them to build ties to other community groups, promote diversity, mobilize mo·bi·lize v. 1. To make mobile or capable of movement. 2. To restore the power of motion to a joint. 3. To release into the body, as glycogen from the liver. against anti-union employers and, in a variety of ways, focus on recruiting new union members. ``This is an overall framework for rebuilding the labor movement at the grass roots grass roots pl.n. (used with a sing. or pl. verb) 1. People or society at a local level rather than at the center of major political activity. Often used with the. 2. The groundwork or source of something. ,'' said Marylin Sneiderman, director of the AFL-CIO's field organizing department. Amy Dean, who worked with local councils to develop the plan, said it was significant that it called on participating organizations to aim at increasing their membership by 3 percent annually. |
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