LABOR NEEDS "THAT VISION THING"

By David Bacon

There’s no question that labor
pulled out all the stops to defeat George Bush. Over
2000 members of the country’s largest union, the
Service Employees (SEIU), left their jobs to go
campaign in battleground states, and the organization
budgeted $65 million for the campaign. The AFL-CIO
itself fielded 5000 fulltime staffers and 225,000
volunteers.

That made Bush’s victory a hard one to swallow. For
many of the most progressive leaders of US labor,
however, it was more than just bitter - it was
threatening. "We have no alternative now but to resist
at every level," said Stuart Acuff, the AFL-CIO’s
organizing director. "And one of the things we have to
anticipate is the repression of political enemies.
We’re all going to have to stand up for each other."
Dolores Huerta, legendary co-founder of the United Farm
Workers, was even more blunt. "We might as well start
organizing now, if we don’t want to run for cover after
this one," she warned.

Unions were motivated by the same track record that now
concerns them. The first Bush administration compiled
a four-year history of orders prohibiting unions in
government departments, federal injunctions during
lockouts and strikes, rollbacks of overtime and worker
protection legislation, and job losses greater than any
administration since Herbert Hoover. This was the
record unions sought to put in front of their own
members, and to carry to the nation’s workers in
general.

In many ways, union members heeded the call. Eliseo
Medina, SEIU executive vice-president, called the
mobilization unprecedented, and said that despite
Bush’s victory, "thousands and thousands of members
participated in this effort." That, he said, gives
labor a base to resist the attacks it now expects from
a second Bush administration. "We’ve got our work cut
out for us," he cautioned. "We still have a battle for
health insurance, for decent wages, and for immigrant
worker rights. If we’re going to succeed, not just in
making positive changes, but in making sure things
don’t get worse, we’re going to need an engaged
membership and engaged communities. If we don’t speak
up, nobody else is going to."

As is the case in every national election, unions
contributed votes to the Democratic side of the ticket
in larger proportions than their share of the
population. Union members make up 13% of the
workforce, but their household represent 24% of the
electorate, or about 27 million votes. The Peter Hart
poll gave Kerry a 65-33% lead among those voters. In
the battleground states, where unions put most of their
resources, the poll gave Kerry a slightly greater,
68-31% edge. A CNN poll was similar - 60-39% for
Kerry.

While Kerry won a majority among voters of color, he
lost among white voters - except union members. He
lost white men by an 18% difference, but won white male
unionists by 21%, and lost white women by 4% while
carrying white union women by 35%.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told a post-election
news conference that in the future, "we have to do
more." Huerta, however, felt it was the Kerry campaign
that could have done more, especially in combating the
use of abortion and gay marriage by the Republican
Party. "There were little papers printed in Spanish and
English, distributed throughout the Latino community,
saying a vote for Kerry was a sin," she explained. "We
only got 54% of the women’s vote, which was down from
62%. That means we lost a lot among women. You need
organizers on the ground. People get so confused by
television, and never hear the truth. Unless you have
someone who hand carries the message, we’re going to
lose every time."

Acuff saw the same problem campaigning in Wisconsin.
"In the upper Midwest, there was an alignment for many
years between workers, union members and Catholics.
That alignment has been broken. We saw a lot of
confused and conflicted working people in Wisconsin in
this election, particularly over the issue of
abortion."

Huerta and Acuff point to an important division, not
just in the electorate in general, but among union
members. Only 16% of union voters listed "moral
values" as their prime interest, but Bush won 59% of
their votes. Unions concentrated their attack on the
economy, which 42% of union voters listed as their main
concern. Kerry took 71% of those votes.

But while the war in Iraq made constant headlines, and
was the main feature of presidential debates, the
official AFL-CIO campaign had little to say about it.
Some unions, like SEIU, used their own set of campaign
points that condemned the war. But while 40% of union
members listed Iraq as their primary issue, the 51% who
went to Kerry didn’t do so because of convincing
arguments by the AFL-CIO.

This split in labor was visible even during the
primaries, when public sector unions in particular
supported Howard Dean because of his antiwar stance.
"It’s wrong to think that speaking out on the war is
the kiss of death in November," Medina warned at the
time. "It’s draining resources needed at home, leaving
a huge deficit leading to the loss of jobs, while kids
of working families are being sent to fight and die."
Since last summer, labor opposition has grown. Art
Pulaski, executive secretary of the California Labor
Federation (the AFL-CIO’s largest state body), declared
after Kerry’s loss that "opposition to the war is going
to swell in labor. It’s going to be part of our
opposition to everything the administration does."
Acuff called the war "not only unnecessary but unjust.
Waving the bloody shirt may work, but it doesn’t mean
it’s right. It’s certainly not about combating
terrorism or keeping this country safe. It’s about
Bush’s political agenda."

While many labor activists foresee a long series of
defensive battles throughout a second Bush term, some
still see the opportunity to advance toward labor
goals, healthcare in particular. In California, the
effort by unions and healthcare advocates to pass
Proposition 72, which would have required large
employers to provide health insurance for their
workers, failed narrowly. "This is just another
example of how far large corporations will go to avoid
responsibility to their employees and the public,"
Pulaski fumed. "As a result, all of us will pay more
for our healthcare. Many will lose their insurance,
and taxpayers will subsidize Wal-Mart and MacDonald’s.
This issue is not going away."

Medina even foresees the possibility of putting a
similar measure on the California ballot in 2006. "The
solution is going to have to begin at the state, not at
the Federal level," he asserted. "This is a marathon,
not a sprint."

Acuff, who won notoriety in 1994 by leading sit-ins in
the office of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich,
protesting the "Contract on America," warned that new
campaigns of resistance and civil disobedience might be
in the works. He concluded that unions have to go
beyond just talking about bread and butter issues.
Over the long haul, he said, the key problem for labor
was "the vision thing" - unions need to present an
alternative to the moral and social values trumpeted by
the religious right.

"We need to define an agenda that has the potential to
change peoples’ lives," he explained, "that’s more than
just tinkering around the edges. We don’t need to
retreat on an agenda of fundamental change, including
immigration, healthcare and the right to organize. That
would be a huge mistake. But we need to talk about our
values, that provide the foundation for that agenda -
greater liberation for human beings, greater freedom,
greater opportunity, more justice in the country and in
the world."

[David Bacon is a reporter and photographer
specializing in labor issues. He can be reached at:
dbacon@igc.org]