The AFL-CIO, the county’s largest labor organization, held its 29th Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, PA this week. The quadrennial convention offers a democratic forum in which delegates dispatched by the Federation’s dozens of affiliated unions  — and the more than thirteen million working people they represent — convene to select leaders, adopt constitution amendments, craft resolutions and policies, and broadly shape and chart the future trajectory of the labor movement.

Liz Shuler was elected president of the Federation yesterday, a role she has held in an acting capacity since former president Richard Trumka’s sudden passing last summer. She delivered a rousing speech after the results were revealed, describing the labor movement as “the single most powerful and hopeful movement for progress in this country” and casting the moment as a “defining” one in which the wealthy are concentrating their power yet “working people are rising” and “turning to unions as a solution to their problems.” The labor movement is “on the brink of something big,” she concluded.

President Joe Biden was also in attendance yesterday, delivering a speech in which he renewed his pledge to be “the most pro-union president in history,” denounced the greed of the billionaire class, urged Congress to pass the PRO Act, and insisted he has “never been more optimistic about America” than he is today. “We’re not going back to the false promises of trickle-down economics,” Biden assured the audience. “We’re going forward” and “unions are going to play a critical role in that future.”

In litigation news, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts blocked a high profile ballot initiative that — essentially the Massachusetts version of California’s Prop. 22 — would have enshrined app-based workers as independent contractors in the commonwealth, stripping them of basic legal protections such as a minimum wage and the right to unionize.

The SJC found that the proposed ballot measure, funded by leading gig companies, was inconsistent with the Massachusetts Constitution, which limits ballot measures to one discrete issue, because it would have asked voters to make “two substantively distinct policy decisions”: (1) whether to classify gig drivers as independent contractors, and (2) whether to cabin tech companies’ liability for any torts such drivers commit.

In Amazon Labor Union news, an NLRB hearing on Amazon’s efforts to undo the union’s stunning Staten Island triumph began on Monday. Amazon filed dozens of election objections alleging that the ALU (and Region 29, which administered the election) destroyed the necessary laboratory conditions by engaging in a serios of unfair practices, including intimidating employees and distributing marijuana in exchange for union support. The hearing will continue for several more days, if not weeks. It will be broadcast here.