Every year, the affiliated union organizations that comprise the New Jersey State AFL-CIO vote on which election candidates to endorse based on voting records and working family issues. The New Jersey labor movement has a proud history of supporting both Democratic and Republican candidates who support working families. Working in partnership with the AFL-CIO Political Department, New Jersey’s Central Labor Councils, Building Trades Councils, and affiliated local unions, the Committee on Political Education (COPE) makes every effort to educate union members and their families about these endorsements and why they were made.

Labor Candidates Program

The New Jersey State AFL-CIO has built the country’s best Labor Candidates Program, achieving 1,031 union member election victories since 1997. Now, union members represent working families in public offices within the U.S. House of Representatives, the State Senate and Assembly, on County Freeholder Boards, in our towns as Mayors, Aldermen, Committee and Council members, Fire Commissioners, and on School Boards.

The Labor Candidates School and Non-Partisan Training Seminars are the cornerstones of this successful political program. Election experts instruct union members about fund-raising and election law, research, message development, public speaking, media relations, voter contact, volunteer recruitment, targeting, and get-out-the-vote.  Participants are awarded full scholarships by the New Jersey State AFL-CIO.  

2018 Labor Candidates School

Labor 2019 Election Toolkit

Local union leadership and Labor 2019 coordinators can access sample local union letters in support of endorsed candidates, sample fliers, phone scripts, labor-to-labor walks scripts, the Labor 2019 election campaign calendar and more.

Click on our Toolbox for
more information

Volunteer

The New Jersey State AFL-CIO thanks the thousands of rank-and-file volunteers who knock on doors, staff the phones, distribute fliers in the workplace, stuff envelopes, and register voters in support of working families’ legislative and political agenda.

To volunteer, please contact your local union leadership or click here