National AFL-CIO The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a voluntary federation of 65 national and international labor unions. Today’s unions represent 13 million working women and men of every race and ethnicity and from every walk of life. We are teachers and teamsters, musicians and miners, firefighters and farm workers, bakers and bottlers, engineers and editors, pilots and public employees, doctors and nurses, painters and laborers—and more.