Overseeing the operation were Alicia Smith and Dan
McGrogan, allies despite being on opposite sides of a
civil war among America's unions that once seemed to
threaten organized labor's political clout. Their
partnership helps explain why labor remains a potent force
in the Democratic Party's drive to seize control of one or
both houses of Congress when voters go to the polls Nov.
7.
As unions seek to capitalize on an election that could
produce a Congress more sympathetic to their agenda, they
have set aside their grudges in hopes of winning future
legislative battles over the minimum wage, health care,
pensions and Social Security.
In part, the effort may be simple opportunism. But the
alliances also are testimony to the durability of
long-standing partnerships among local unions that predate
the rupture of the AFL-CIO labor coalition.
“We have relationships at the street and shop level
that go back many, many years,” said McGrogan, a strategic
programs coordinator, 48, for Local 1776 of the United
Food and Commercial Workers. “It isn't whether we agree or
disagree with the split. It's simply that in this
election, we're going to work together.”
Smith, 26, an AFL-CIO operative, said: “At this level
and this point in the election cycle, it's all about
solidarity. We're all a part of the same labor movement,
and that really resonates with all of our members.”
The schism, the result of long-standing policy
differences and personal rivalries, became a reality a
year ago when the UFCW and six other major unions,
including the Service Employees International Union, left
the AFL-CIO and set up the rival Change to Win coalition.
As a result, the AFL-CIO saw its membership drop from 13
million to 9 million workers.
At the heart of the
dispute was the complaint by the Change to Win unions that
the giant federation was investing too heavily in politics
and not enough in expanding organized labor's ranks.
The split triggered speculation within union and
political circles that organized labor's ability to
mobilize its members on Election Day. The loser would be
the Democratic Party, which over the years has grown
reliant on the union movement to get blue-collar
supporters to the polls.
The result seems to be the opposite, said Richard Hurd,
a labor expert at Cornell University. In the industrial
states of Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, scene of some
of the nation's most hotly contested races, labor's
political activism may actually be at a new high, Hurd
said.
“You have an increased overall effort because Change to
Win is there also, pushing their members in a coordinated
way – and with more coordination and involvement of the
different unions than historically has been the case,” he
said.
Helping to bridge the gap at the local levels has been
the “solidarity charter program,” launched by the AFL-CIO
in the months after the split. The charters offered Change
to Win unions a way to re-establish ties with the
federation at the state and local level.
The unions will be trying to blunt a Republican turnout
effort that in the 2002 congressional election and in the
presidential race two years later played a key role in
keeping President Bush in the White House and his GOP
allies in charge of Congress. The GOP effort will be
augmented by Republican-leaning business groups, such as
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has spent millions to
mobilize its network.
Backed by a $40 million war chest, the AFL-CIO says it
is targeting 13.4 million voters, counting retirees,
family members and participants in an affiliated program
known as Working America.
“We have a huge universe we're talking to,” said Karen
Ackerman, the political director of the AFL-CIO. “Where we
can work with the CTW unions, we want to do that. But we
feel (this) is the biggest, most substantial turnout
program of anyone in this election.”
CTW officials declined to discuss the organization's
voter-mobilization budget. Gregory Tarpinian, CTW's
executive director, described the coalition's affiliates
as being among the most politically active in the labor
movement and said they would be “as or more active than
they have been in elections past.”
In some areas, the two sides appear to be pooling their
resources and membership lists, while in other instances
local unions are concentrating on rallying their members.
In Pennsylvania, with 1.4 million union voters, the
process of integrating the AFL-CIO and Change to Win
programs appears to have been smoother than in other
states, such as Michigan, where over half the CTW unions
have not used the solidarity charter process to reconnect
with the AFL-CIO.
“We tend to be more parallel than merged,” said Mark
Gaffney, head of the Michigan AFL-CIO.
A cooperative effort has also emerged in Minnesota's
urban centers. But Kristin Beckmann, executive director of
the SEIU State Council, a major CTW unit, said, “It has
been a little logistically challenging to figure out all
the details.”
The complexities posed by the Election Day effort have
caused some labor officials to worry that their ability to
influence the 2008 presidential election may be in
jeopardy.
“If there is any message that comes out of Minnesota,
it's that we should all be in the same house,” said Ray
Waldron, head of the Minnesota AFL-CIO. “We should do it
together.”
Organized labor's importance as a political bloc is
much diminished from what it was 50 years ago, when unions
represented 35 percent of the work force. The figure now
is 12.5 percent if government workers are included and 7.9
percent if they are not.
But political experts say that the unions can still be
formidable, particularly when united.
“If the intensity of their leaders translates into
anything, they are really into this race,” said Terry
Madonna, a Pennsylvania pollster. “Their organizations
aren't what they were 30 to 40 years ago, but that's not
to say they can't mobilize if given a chance. And given
this environment, they are pretty mobilized.”
