Fighting unity also includes trade union unity. Ideas like a metal workers federation with common expiration dates for contracts in steel, auto, electrical and machine tool industries are an example. The AFL-CIO's Union Cities program and union coalition drives to organize whole industries like Silicon Valley are also important initiatives for greater unity. Winning for working families also means championing new and broader concepts of unity. For example fighting the attacks on public education and for other critical social needs is key to uniting the widest possible sections of the people with labor.
Unity also demands an end to anti-communism.
Now state and local labor federations are following suit and thus bringing a renewed spirit of democracy and working class unity to the labor movement. In the 2000 elections, thousands of union activists saw for themselves the severe limitations of the Democratic Party in the battle to defeat the extreme corporate right entrenched in the Republican Party. Workers are writing laws and setting policy. In the last three national elections labor has developed its own independent apparatus for political action. Union election efforts are now much more likely to be run out of union halls.