A fractured labor movement is throwing everything into its campaign for Barack Obama

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=labor_unitted_and_divided

Harold Meyerson | August 28, 2008 | web only


At first glance, the labor movement gathered at the Democratic National Convention couldn't have looked more united. On Sunday, labor delegates from every wing of the movement – the unions in the AFL-CIO, those in the breakaway federation Change To Win, and those in the unaffiliated National Education Association – gathered together in the Denver Convention Center in an unprecedented display of political unity. Rival federation chiefs John Sweeney (the AFL-CIO) and Anna Burger (Change To Win) shared the podium. AFSCME President Jerry McEntee introduced (perfunctorily, to be sure) SEIU President Andy Stern. All pledged to do everything they could, and work together in most cases, to ensure Barack Obama's election. A crowd of roughly 2,000 union members, including close to 1,000 labor delegates to the convention, cheered lustily.

And when the rally ended and the cheering stopped, delegates from four AFL-CIO unions – the Steelworkers, the Communications Workers (CWA), the Auto Workers (UAW) and the far smaller International Federation of Professional and Technical Employees (the IFPTE, which represents, among others, aeronautical engineers at aerospace companies) – gathered for their own reception in a nearby hotel. Over the past few months, the four unions have quietly formed a political-action sub-group, which they call the Alliance, to wage their own political campaign this fall, which they are funding by withholding their payments into the AFL-CIO's political program. This week in Denver, they have been caucusing daily.

Operationally, the Alliance unions will be working within the broader AFL-CIO program in the battleground states. But on their own, they will be running a joint worksite-based campaign in seven states, including the key swing states of Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. They will also have a presence in three states that John McCain should win handily, but where there are key Senate contests on the ballot: Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi. In addition to the AFL-CIO's message, they will be delivering their own, which heavily stresses their opposition to corporate-led free trade.

The practical effect of the Alliance's semi-defection is too early to gauge. Overall, labor's program for the fall is massive and strategically very smart: Micro-targeting three million labor households in battleground states with a combined worksite, door-to-door, phone, mail, and e-mail campaign on which unions, in and out of the AFL-CIO, will spend a total of between $300 million and $400 million. That figures includes the outlays on the AFL-CIO's Working America program, which enrolls voters in largely white, working-class communities – many of them former auto workers and steel workers – into a hybrid union of their own, which doesn't represent them at their worksite but which does mail them election-related materials, talk to them on the phone, and send canvassers to their doorstep.

The four Alliance unions will be sending their volunteers into the AFL-CIO's precinct walks and sending their members at least some AFL-CIO mailings, in addition to putting out a message of their own. In that sense, says UAW President Ron Gettlefinger, their program is "AFL-CIO-plus. We follow the AFL-CIO plan where it makes sense."

The part of the AFL-CIO plan that the Alliance doesn't think makes sense is, as they see it, the Federation's deficient emphasis on laying the groundwork for enacting the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) next year. For labor, getting Congress to pass EFCA, which would enable unions to organize workers by proscribing management from threatening those workers if they vote union, is a matter of life or death. If Democrats can't elect Obama and push their numbers in the Senate close to a filibuster-proof 60, EFCA doesn't stand a chance. The unionization rate in the private sector stands at 7 percent, and without EFCA, labor may be looking not at renewed growth but at a private-sector unionization rate of 5 percent or less four years from now.

FULL story at link.

[Virginia Dare]

1. As a union member, I say thank you John McCain!....

this gives us all a common ground on which we can work together as brothers and sisters. This reminds all of us why we do what we do.