Our Story

The Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation, AFL-CIO unites the power of 95 unions and 60,000 union members to advocate for working families in 13 Houston-area counties. The unions that compose our labor council represent workers in the public sector, manufacturing, the building and construction trades, the transportation of people and goods, and the hospitality and other service industries.

We mobilize our members and community partners to demand a fair shot at better lives for all working people -- regardless of the color of our skin, the country we come from, our faith tradition, or whom we love.

By bringing unions together, we amplify unions’ voices and solidify their power so workers get a better deal at the bargaining table, at the voting booth, and in the corridors where legislation is made.

OFFICE PHONE NUMBER: 713-923-9473

Our History

For more than a hundred years, labor councils have been forces for equality and opportunity in the greater Houston region. 

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For a long time, the wealthy elites that ran the Texas Gulf Coast made sure working people generated wealth for them at low wages, few benefits, and under dangerous conditions. The labor movement had to out-think and out-organize against impossible odds. Solidarity and activism were the keys to winning a voice, fairness, and respect on the job —a lesson that continues to inform our work.

Gulf Coast labor councils have provided hot meals to unemployed workers, helped usher in the 8-hour workday, and fought for civil rights for those who had been denied them for far too long.

As the Houston metro region became the fourth largest population center in the U.S., spanning multiple counties, and drawing in migrants from other states and countries, the labor movement recognized the need to reorganize to build power in the emerging environment. In 2015, five labor councils came together to form the Texas Gulf Coast Labor Federation, AFL-CIO to more effectively win change for working people across Gulf Coast counties.

The Gulf Coast Labor Federation has brought new excitement to the labor movement in the greater Houston region with newly affiliated unions, combined financial resources, new staffing and programs, multi-county political mobilization, an expanded communications capacity, community outreach and involvement, and broadening relationships with the progressive movement.

What We Do

  • Campaigns — We push for transformational policy changes that raise workplace standards and shift resources to meet the needs of all working people. Initiatives like Build Houston Better established good jobs in the construction industry as the region rebuilt after Hurricane Harvey, and our rent relief campaign won rental assistance for Houstonians who lost jobs due to the coronavirus.

  • Politics - We coordinate labor’s Get Out the Vote programs to elect progressive candidates who share our goals of improving life for working people and hold them accountable to that agenda afterward.

  • Communications - Through social and traditional media we shape people’s perceptions of what’s happening in Houston’s growing economy and bring attention to the strategies and campaigns that the labor movement is undertaking to create a better, fairer economy. 

  • Member Engagement, Mobilization, and Training - We mobilize union members to participate in our organizing, political, and legislative work and train union leaders to be more effective.

  • Organizing - More than 100 years of experience tells us that unions and the right to bargain collectively are the best way to create good, safe jobs. We help protect existing local union chapters and support unions’ efforts to bring more workers into unions so they can make better lives for themselves.

  • Alliances - We build relationships and collaborations with community organizations and support for labor’s goals among the broader public.

As a labor council, we play a particular role in the labor movement’s mission to build power for working people. We endeavor to:

  • Convene affiliated unions around shared interests and opportunities and running coordinated programs to deploy/leverage power strategically

  • Add value to the work of our unions with all collaborative projects we take on. 

  • Build capacity, infrastructure, and a culture of solidarity and activism through all of the work we take on. 

Read a 2017 United Association of Labor Educators report on the development of the GCALF. The report was commissioned by the AFL-CIO to assess recent efforts to invest in and revitalize labor councils in 5 Southern cities.