Labor & Employment Law

Buy Union for the Holidays, and All Year Long

By James Parks

This holiday season, union families can use their power to help keep good union jobs in the community by purchasing union-made goods and services. The AFL-CIO Union Label & Service Trades Department (UL&STD) has compiled a list of union-made products you can buy and another list of products and services that the AFL-CIO has approved for boycott.

Start your shopping list with a visit to the Union Label website, www.unionlabel.org, and click on Search for Union Products to see if a product is union made and what union produces it. If you can?t find what you?re looking for there, move on to the websites of individual unions that show up as links on the page.

Another great place to find a wide assortment of union-made products is the AFL-CIO Online Store, where you will find unique apparel, buttons, mugs, decals and other outstanding union items. 

If you’re buying a wireless phone, check out AT&T’s Mobility, the only union wireless company. About 42,000 Communications Workers of America (CWA) members work at Mobility, providing quality service along with the very latest in technology.

In the market for a new car? Check out the UAW?s Do Buy list for union-made cars here.  

If you?re traveling this holiday season, find out which hotels are on the AFL-CIO boycott list here along with dozens of entertainment and recreation services where the federation has endorsed a boycott.

UL&STD President Rich Kline says buying union-made products is the best way to help improve the economy:

Let?s practice buying union 365 days a year, seeking out and purchasing union-made products and services. Using our union buying power strengthens the U.S. economy as a whole, while it supports our brothers and sisters and their employers. Let?s be merry and let?s be bright. Buy union, buy American and help to make things right.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on December 12, 2010 (boomark / email).