North Carolina AFL-CIO Convention Backs May Day 2028 Plans

The North Carolina AFL-CIO passed a resolution at its September convention backing the call from the United Auto Workers for mass action on May 1, 2028.

The resolution directs the state AFL-CIO to create a May Day Committee open to members of all affiliates, as well as invited individuals from other organizations, which could include groups like the North Carolina Association of Educators and United Electrical Workers Local 150, which has been organizing public sector workers throughout the state.

The committee is tasked with “discussing challenges, opportunities, and logistics of the May Day 2028 mass action” and “build[ing] a coalition of political, social, community, and labor organizations” in the run-up to the action. Activists will be seeking to get other unions to time their contracts to expire in the spring of 2028—although that could be difficult, given most union contracts are at least three years long—or to find other creative ways to participate in May Day actions.

The UAW has issued a call for unions across the country to align expiration dates around May 1, 2028, when contracts covering 146,000 workers at the Big 3 automakers are set to expire. “If we’re going to truly take on the billionaire class and rebuild the economy so that it starts to work for the benefit of the many and not the few,” said UAW President Shawn Fain, “then it’s important that we not only strike, but that we strike together.”

The statewide resolution was submitted by members of the UAW, Electrical Workers (IBEW), Teamsters, and NewsGuild. The Triangle Labor Council, which brings together unions in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, passed a similar resolution in 2024.

In June, delegates at the Texas AFL-CIO state convention also passed a resolution backing "escalating, coordinated action for public education, democracy, and workers' rights on May 1, 2026, May 1, 2027, and May 1, 2028."

LOWEST UNION DENSITY

North Carolina has the lowest union density in the country. Just 2.4 percent of the state’s 4.6 million workers belong to unions, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among roughly 100,000 union members are 10,000 members of the Government Employees (AFGE), 8,700 members of the Communications Workers, 4,700 Steelworkers, and 4,500 Machinists.

There have been some important organizing victories in the state in the past several years. In 2020, 1,800 nurses at Mission Hospital in Asheville voted to join National Nurses United, the biggest victory since 1975 at a nonunion hospital in the South. Another 500 cabin cleaners and ground crew for an American Airlines contractor at Charlotte Douglas International Airport voted to join the Service Employees (SEIU) in 2023. And workers at six Starbucks locations in the state have voted to unionize.

“The labor movement is alive and well in North Carolina, despite our low density level,” said Ben Smith, head trustee for UAW Local 5287 at Thomas Built Buses and one of the endorsers of the resolution.

TRUCK AND BUS CONTRACT EXPIRES

One big North Carolina union contract up in 2028 is the UAW’s Daimler Truck agreement. It covers 7,400 workers at the company’s four North Carolina heavy truck and school bus factories, as well as at parts distribution centers in Atlanta and Memphis, and expires on March 3, 2028. DTNA workers used an energetic contract campaign and strike threat to win 25 percent pay increases, profit-sharing, and a cost-of-living adjustment in negotiations last year.

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One of the keys to winning that contract was the unity among different UAW locals. In the past, the company pitted the locals against each other, using separate bargaining to negotiate lower wage scales for workers at the Thomas Built Buses’ plant. Last year’s contract ended wage tiers.

“This time they didn’t break our solidarity,” said Jon Greene, president of UAW Local 3520, which represents 3,000 workers at the company’s Freightliner plant in Cleveland, North Carolina. “We united together—we said if we take one plant out [on strike] we’re taking them all out.”

Greene, who was one of the sponsors of the May Day resolution, said that seeing the power of unity and solidarity in winning a good contract at Daimler Truck gave him a sense of what the labor movement might achieve with a coordinated mobilization. “Imagine what kind of leverage we could have if we stood in solidarity and talked about the things that are on everybody’s mind,” he said, highlighting issues like pensions for all, a livable wage, and an end to stock buybacks. “It looks like the country’s real divided, but we have a lot more in common with each other than we think we do—we’re just being divided by rich politicians on both sides.”

Greene also acknowledged that building a strong contract campaign and real strike threat at Daimler Truck took a lot of preparation—and building toward successful action around May Day will take the same. “If this is going to be successful there’s going to have to be a lot more talk and planning for it in the next three years,” said Greene.

INDUSTRY GROWING

North Carolina is experiencing major industrial growth. Toyota opened a $14 billion plant earlier this year to make batteries for hybrids and EVs. The plant, which is the size of 121 football fields, will eventually employ 5,100 workers. Aerospace start-up JetZero announced in June it is building a $4.7 billion facility in Greensboro to produce commercial airplanes; the company claims it will create 14,000 jobs. Electronics manufacturer Jabil is building a data center hardware factory northeast of Charlotte that will employ 1,200.

The authors of the resolution hope that a big, visible mobilization by unions in the state around May Day 2028 will help raise the labor movement’s profile among non-union workers, too. “I think organizing the South is key,” said Greene. “It’s a long time coming.”

“The Teamsters with the UPS contract and the UAW at the Big Three waged big campaigns that got a lot of attention, and we saw afterwards an upshot in organizing,” said Zoey Moretti Niebuhr, a warehouse worker at UPS with Teamsters Local 391 and delegate to the convention from the Triangle Labor Council.

The contract covering 300,000 UPS Teamsters expires July 31, 2028, meaning May 1 will likely fall in the middle of the union’s contract campaign.

The convention also elected a new state fed president, Braxton Winston, a member of the Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE) from Charlotte. He succeeds MaryBe MacMillan, who was elected as the labor federation’s first woman president in 2017. Winston was on the Charlotte City Council from 2017 to 2023, and was the Democratic nominee for North Carolina Commissioner of Labor, losing in a close race.