One hundred years ago today, after a seven-decade campaign, the 19th Amendment gave the vote to millions of women across the United States. And although achieving women’s suffrage in 1920 was a major victory, it was another 45 years before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated voting barriers for women of color.

That’s a lot of hard-fought, hard-won years of women making a difference through our voices and our votes. And nobody knows this better than union women, who vote at the voting booth and in our unions.

As we approach this historic 2020 election, mobilizing working women to vote is paramount to the goals of electing female candidates and candidates who advocate for women. Women are also critical to getting this country back on track in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and ending its disproportionate impact on women, especially women of color. We know that even as our vote is more crucial than ever, it is also more imperiled, with renewed voter suppression efforts and attacks on voting rights and our democracy.

Are you ready to vote? Go to www.workersfirstvoteunion.org to make sure you’re ready, registered and empowered to vote.

As we commemorate this centennial anniversary, let us lift up the names of our ancestors who made this day possible: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Lucy Stone, Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Maria W. Stewart and many others.

We honor their work by making sure our voices are heard this November! Get ready to vote at www.workersfirstvoteunion.org.

We also invite you to our virtual event, a roundtable discussion to celebrate women’s right to vote while uplifting the issues affecting working women. Please join us for a conversation between myself, AFT President Randi Weingarten, UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) Executive Director Alvina Yeh, Laborers (LIUNA) Women’s Caucus Co-Chair Cassandra Hammond, and Institute for Women’s Policy Research President and CEO Dr. C. Nicole Mason today at 6:30 p.m. ET. Click here to RSVP now.

In solidarity and sisterhood,

Liz Shuler

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer