Labor is not donating to Democrats in this election cycle. Instead it is putting its resources into mounting its own GOTV ground game.
Why?
The failure to pass the EFCA bill, the Employee Free Choice Act, felt like a kick in the teeth to labor. (EFCA provided for card check, the ability of workers to vote privately to form unions by filling in a card ballot.) The failure of Democrats to stand up for unions more generally, as in the Wisconsin recalls, is more of the same. Barack Obama did not speak out on the recalls until the very last day before the election, and even then not in a speech but a tweet. Not only is labor not donating to candidates or their PACs, but unions are not working with the Organizing For America/BarackObama.com GOTV operation. Here is what they propose instead.
Adam Ruben of MoveOn.org Political Action, wrote yesterday, in advance of Labor Day:
A couple of months ago, I sat down with leaders of the AFL-CIO for a really hard conversation.
With all the money Karl Rove, the Koch Brothers, and others are spending to defeat President Obama—we needed to do something truly game changing, or President Obama could really lose this election.
And we decided the only way to beat the GOP money machine was to team up and dig deep in the grassroots to create the biggest independent get-out-the-vote campaign in the country.
So today I'm excited to announce an unprecedented partnership between the AFL-CIO's Workers' Voice and MoveOn's 7 million members to turn out the same progressive voters who swept Obama to victory in '08.
I have been pointing Kossacks to various GOTV Web sites, including Organizing for America, and talking about voter registration drives by high-school Civics teachers, the League of Women Voters, and others, and DoJ and ACLU court cases and other actions against voter suppression. Here is another option that some of you might want to help fund or volunteer in.
See also AFL-CIO Super PAC and MoveOn join to get out the vote for Obama here on Daily Kos.
Here is a statement from Workers' Voice:
What is Workers’ Voice?
Workers’ Voice is a Political Action Committee representing and fighting for all working families, union and non-union, in political and legislative campaigns. It is funded by large and small dollar donors and our resources are directed by activists participating in a field program to elect progressive candidates and pass legislation to improve the lives of working families.
How and when did Workers’ Voice form?
Workers’ Voice got started in April of 2012. Traditionally, labor unions were not allowed to talk to and organize non-members in political campaigns. That all changed with the destructive Citizens’ United ruling. The only way we compete with the flood of outside money corrupting the political process even further is by empowering individuals across the country to organize in their communities. We’ll never be able to match the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove and Sheldon Adelson dollar-for-dollar, but there is no more powerful messenger than neighbors talking to neighbors, friends to friends, and family to family.
Is Workers’ Voice focused only on the presidential race, or down ballot contests as well?
Of course the Presidential race is a top priority for Workers’ Voice and our members, but we’re also very active in a number of Senate and House races as well. Additionally, participants in our program have the ability to direct resources towards races we aren’t currently involved in. That could be a House race, or even State Senate, Mayoral and other campaigns important to you and your community.
How do I find and get in touch with a Workers’ Voice office near me?
For a list of Workers’ Voice field offices, please click here (.pdf).
When will the Workers’ Voice / RePurpose program start?
It’s already underway and there are ways for you to begin taking action and earning points today. For more information, please email info@repurpose.org
What organizations is Workers’ Voice partnering with?
- AFL-CIO
- Working America
- MoveOn
- Credo
- Daily Kos
More coming…
Interested in joining? Email us at info@workersvoice.org
The Labor Question
My mother and one aunt were union schoolteachers. I knew, and know, lots of schoolteachers. One of my best friends from high school became a New York City policeman.
The most important issue in GOTV is that Democrats feel isolated and helpless. They do not see that their individual vote matters. It is not enough to jaw them to vote. We have to invite them to become part of something bigger, something worth fighting for not just for a few minutes in the voting booth, but at all times over their entire lifetime and indeed much longer. That means, in part, winning big enough to get to the Progressive agenda, and bring in even more of the disaffected Democratic majority so that we can get to still more.
If we all voted, we would clobber the Republicans by about 12% nationwide. I ran some numbers. That would give us something like a 68-32 Senate majority after three election cycles. Enough for sane labor laws. Enough for Single Payer, for Medicare for all. Sane tax laws. Sane financial regulation. Sane environmental laws, including renewable energy. Sanity on LGBT issues, including full gay marriage. Sanity on women's issues, including birth control, abortion, and employment. Sanity on ending poverty. Sanity on your issues, whatever else they may be.
But we are talking about what concerns Labor here, and we need to remember what sanity in Labor law would look like.
- We have the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, one of the first bills President Obama signed into law.
- Not Clarence Thomas running the EEOC into the ground, taking on as few cases as he could get away with, and failing to pursue those.
- Not Republicans packing the NLRB.
- Not colonial oppression in US territories such as American Samoa, where US labor law does not apply, but the Made in America label does.
- Not more and more states putting in Right-to-Work laws, but instead a national Workers Bill of Rights.
- Not cutting off unemployment during a deep recession.
- EFCA, with card check for union elections.
- Full union rights for teachers, police, firefighters, and air traffic controllers, among others in the public sector.
- No more unFree Trade agreements and corporate subsidies for shipping jobs overseas.
- No more support by such as Ayn Randian Alan Greenspan at the Fed for holding down "inflation", defined as workers getting any share of profits from productivity increases.
- No balanced budget nonsense when government stimulus spending is the only guarantee of job growth in a recession.
- No war on women in the workplace as well as the home.
- No war on education.
- No war on infrastructure.
- No voter suppression for workers, including cutting off evening and weekend early voting.
Labor is one of those communities that provides meaning and purpose to votes. But Labor is usually defined only as union membership, which is greatly restricted by anti-union laws being pushed by multinational corporations, most notably "Right-to-Work" laws and laws forbidding states from negotiating with public-sector unions, or stripping existing rights. We have to recognize that Labor includes the families and friends of union members, and all those who want to form unions but are prevented from doing so, and all those who support union rights even if it is not to their immediate, personal financial advantage. We have to welcome all of these people, and let them take part in all of the activities of the movement.
The Democratic failure to pass the promised EFCA, the Employee Free Choice Act, with its card check provision, was a kick in the face to labor. Even if you understand the dynamics of the Senate, and the apparent impossibility of getting the Senate Blue Dogs on board for EFCA, the fact that Obama promised EFCA to the unions and then failed to deliver is a major factor in the AFL-CIO decision in this campaign not to contribute to Democratic candidates and Democratic PACs, but to put all of its funding and personpower into its own ground game, most notably GOTV.
Let me also review some other essential points about this year's Democratic campaigns, all of which are essential to the interests of Labor.
The State of the Campaign
Barack Obama is winning in the battleground states, which is what matters in our Electoral College voting system. According to Nate Silver's analysis of all of the polls and other contributing factors, Mitt Romney leads in just one of those states, North Carolina. Our President is moving ahead in Florida, and leads by comfortable margins in the other six. In particular, his leads in Pennsylvania and Ohio are much larger than the potential losses to voter suppression there, even assuming that we do not prevail in the courts in those two states.
Estimates of the Republican Convention bounce range from an extremely weak 1% to pitifully negative. Silver has Obama up by an additional 7.9 votes in the Electoral College in the last week.
See also Nate Silverback in Animal Nuz #112.
It looks like we can keep the Senate, but only narrowly, and possibly take back the House, also only narrowly. It also looks like there might be a little bit of filibuster reform in the next Senate, and it is possible that President Obama and Congressional Democrats may be willing go without Republican votes and use Budget Reconciliation, so that we can pass tax increases, more stimulus investment, and some other kinds of bill with only 50 votes in the Senate (plus the Vice Presidential tie-breaker).
Short version: We're winning, but not by enough to get the Progressive agenda, including sane labor laws.
Progress Against Voter Suppression
Texas: Court rejects onerous ID law.
Florida: DoJ and DHS rejected fishing expedition. Florida may now remove non-citizens only if they have documentary evidence, such as a Green Card number. Court rejected law requiring voter registrations to be turned in within 48 hours. League of Women Voters and Civics teachers back at it.
Virginia: New voter ID law approved strictly on condition that VA mails out the new ID to all registered voters at no charge. DoJ will be watching.
Ohio: Court reinstates early voting on the weekend before the election.
Pennsylvania: Court refused to enjoin voter suppression law in ACLU case citing state Constitution and laws, even though Pennsylvania state House Republican leader Mike Turzai bragged about using it to suppress the vote and ensure a Romney victory, to loud Republican cheering. The appeal will be heard on Sept. 13. A separate DoJ case under Federal law moving through the courts, also.
Wisconsin: Voter ID law turned aside, but the Attorney-General has filed suit to reinstate it.
Short version: We're winning, but not by enough to get to the Progressive agenda, including sane labor laws.
Some GOTV Options
Organizing for America/BarackObama.com:
GottaRegister.org: How to register in any of the 50 states. What documents you need, and how to go about it.
GottaVote.org: How to vote in any of the 50 states. What documents you need, and how to go about it.
Every group under attack by the Republicans has organizations working on the issues and on GOTV. Black and Latino churches, too, among others.
Short version: We're winning, but not by enough to get to the Progressive agenda, including sane labor laws.
Now get out there and give us a bigger win, one that we can parlay into even bigger wins in 2014 and beyond, and to the Progressive agenda, including sane labor laws.