There’s a lot on the line for working people in this election, and a lot on the line for the union movement—especially its immigrant members, its women, its LGBT members, and so many others who the Trump administration and Republicans more generally are attacking as workers and in their lives outside work. And the union movement has campaigned accordingly, working hard and exploring innovative tactics to get out the vote.
The Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas has registered more than 10,000 voters this cycle in the crucial state of Nevada, and helped 650 immigrants become citizens. It’s following that up with a major GOTV push among members and in neighborhoods.
Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, has had 235,000 conversations with voters across 12 states—most notably nearly 42,000 conversations in Ohio, 41,000 in Minnesota, and around 35,000 in Pennsylvania and Michigan. The organization engaged in heavy testing of its results and found that its in-person work adds eight votes out of every 100 conversations.
AFSCME’s I AM 2018 campaign has sought to engage young men of color in 15 cities including Atlanta, Miami, Cleveland, San Antonio, Milwaukee, Detroit, Las Vegas, and more, and has seen major increases in commitments to vote.
Communications Workers of America has run boot camps to train union members to become organizers and activists, and has run a campaign focusing on southern states—including Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee—building on past successes like the work the union did in 2016 to elect Roy Cooper governor of North Carolina, this time with an eye to shrinking the Republican majority in the state legislature and electing more Democrats to Congress.
And after a spring that saw a wave of teacher uprisings, nearly 1,800 educators are on the ballot nationwide. Stay tuned to find out how their races turn out.
Those are just a few of the labor movement efforts to engage workers and get out the vote, happening all around the country and providing a huge infusion of resources and boots on the ground to pro-worker candidates and causes.