Through the coordinated mobilization of union activists, massive education and get-out-the-vote efforts among working family voters and support of union members running for public office, the AFL-CIO and its member unions have created and sustained strategies for year-round political action.

And by linking politics and organizing, working families are building relationships with local elected officials best able to influence employers that might mount aggressive anti-union campaigns to prevent employees from winning a voice at work.

Working families' success at the ballot box in local, state and national elections and, increasingly, in organizing campaigns is a direct result of the AFL-CIO's new year-round political mobilization efforts that tap the union movement's greatest resource: active union members and their families.

Member Mobilization

Labor 1996 and Labor 1998 served as proving grounds for the union movement's innovative new tactics to combat Big Business's big money advantage—a corporate cash gap that has widened from a 9-to-1 edge against working families in 1992 to a 15-to-1 margin in 2000.

By the 2000 elections, the federation's grassroots political action strategies, centered on member-to-member and worksite contact to build a permanent base of political activists, resulted in reaching and registering millions of union voters—and getting them to the polls. In 1992, union household votes made up 19 percent of all votes cast—jumping to 26 percent of the voting electorate in 2000.

Registering and getting out the vote are among grassroots mobilization strategies that have proved most effective in moving a working families agenda. Based on the experience of recent years, the AFL-CIO and its member unions developed a 10-step political action initiative that will be central to working families' success in 2002 and beyond:

1. Recruit a key contact at each local union and worksite.
2. Distribute leaflets at all union worksites.
3. Maximize member contact through union publications.
4. Maximize communication from local presidents and business agents.
5. Maximize impact of union phone calls.
6. Update local unions' membership lists.
7. Increase voter registration by 10 percent.
8. Direct a get-out-the-vote campaign.
9. Build a rapid response network in the workplace.
10. Link politics to organizing.

Building from these guidelines, more than 1,000 coordinators trained through the AFL-CIO were assigned to worksites, local unions, central labor councils and state federations across the nation in 2000. Their goal: to educate voters on working family issues and how well each candidate's position supported those issues, register voters and get them to the polls.

The coordinators and the 100,000 volunteers they recruited distributed 14 million worksite leaflets, made 8 million phone bank calls to union households, registered 2.3 million new union household voters and put together a get-out-the-vote drive that got more than 26 million union household voters to the polls.

"There was a true human element to the election," says New York City Central Labor Council President Brian McLaughlin. "Thousands of union volunteers pulling hundreds of thousands of union members to the polls."

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Those votes made a difference at the local, state and national levels. Union votes put six more working family-friendly U.S. senators in office, turning a 56–44 margin against working families into a 50–50 split. Working families elected more pro-union members to the House of Representatives, narrowing that gap to 221–212. And if not for the U.S. Supreme Court's controversial decision to halt the recount of Florida's presidential vote—despite widespread and substantiated reports of irregularities and voter discrimination—working families would have had a friend in the White House today instead of one of the most anti-worker administrations in recent history.

At the city, county and state levels, union votes:

• Defeated four state ballot initiatives that would have changed the future of public schools and jeopardized children's education as well as silenced working families' voices in the political arena.
• Elected 584 union members to public office as part of the federation's 2000 in 2000 initiative, increasing the number of elected union members in public offices to 2,504, including Minnesota AFT member Julie Sabo, who won a state senate seat, and 30 members of Electrical Workers Local 34 who took office in Cook County, Ill.
• Elected working family-friendly lawmakers to the Colorado and New Hampshire legislatures to ensure those states could not pass so-called right to work laws in 2001.

Bolstering member-to-member contact, the core of successful union-based political mobilization, Labor 2000 also utilized unique outreach efforts to educate and mobilize union members and the public.

Traveling the country and taking part in dozens of rallies, town hall meetings and other events, the Texas Truth Squad—made up of Texas union members who included a teacher, a building trades worker and a corrections officer—got the word out about George W. Bush's anti-worker record as governor of Texas.

At the same time, AFL-CIO officers and Executive Council members boarded "People-Powered" bus tours that stopped at more than 100 events in 25 cities, drawing huge crowds of union members in Appalachia, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest and Pennsylvania. And as the election drew near, the AFL-CIO's unions organized three national leaflet days to energize union voters and get out the vote.

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Linking Politics and Organizing

For working families and their unions, political action doesn't stop on Election Day: More and more, they are making the link between their endorsement and support of candidates and candidates' backing of workers' freedom to choose to join a union.

Union activists are urging lawmakers elected with working family support to join working families at organizing and contract rallies, ask employers to agree to card-check and neutrality agreements and take other steps to shape public opinion and convince employers to respect workers' right to organize a union.

As part of the initiative to link politics to organizing, central labor councils from coast to coast are making it a priority for local and state candidates and public officials to sign right-to-organize pledges, putting politicians on record and employers on notice that workers have a right to a voice at work.

By enlisting officials who won office through the support of working families, graduate teaching assistants at Temple University in Philadelphia, hotel workers in California's Silicon Valley and stadium concession workers at the Cleveland Indian's Jacobs Field have won a voice at work without having to battle vicious anti-union campaigns by their employers.

In Cleveland, for example, elected leaders joined with union and community supporters in delegations that met with the team's management. They urged ball club owners to encourage concession subcontractors to stay neutral in an organizing election. "They saw we had the allies" and agreed to pressure the concession operators who did indeed remain neutral, says John Ryan, executive secretary of the Cleveland AFL-CIO Federation of Labor.

With a permanent base of political activists, more registered union household voters and an unmatched get-out-the-vote campaign, working family voices will be out front in the coming 2002 elections and beyond, ready to challenge Big Business at the ballot box and in organizing campaigns—and better prepared than ever through new year-round political mobilization.

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Year-Round Issue Mobilization

Unions recognize that becoming politically active only at election time will not do the job of mobilizing members around critical working family issues and candidates' positions on those issues. Instilling and nurturing a passion for political action requires nonstop communication with members about issues that are important to their everyday lives, and about how elected officials vote on them. Political action and legislative issue mobilization form a circle—working families become knowledgeable about important issues, elect worker-friendly candidates and then hold them accountable.

In 2000, the AFL-CIO Executive Council set in motion a year-round legislative issue education and mobilization campaign, basing it on the success of the AFL-CIO's political mobilization efforts. Like Labor 2000 and similar political outreach in recent years, the union movement-wide issue mobilization campaign relies heavily on member-to-member and worksite contacts, and is paired with readily available information and a staffing commitment from the federation's affiliate unions.

With some members of Congress and the White House beholden to corporate interests and hostile to working families, rallying union members to mobilize is the key element to advancing a working families agenda and holding corporate interests in check.

"With conservatives feeling their oats again, union members across the political spectrum can understand the importance of uniting against ideas that threaten our economic, social or family security," says Bernard Brommer, recently retired president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

In 2000, working families raised their voices for a fair and substantial boost in the minimum wage, a strong ergonomics standard, a real Patients' Bill of Rights and more, joining with an ally of working families in the White House who could help counter the influence of a Congress controlled by anti-worker lawmakers. Working families and their unions:

• Joined more than 400 other organizations under the banner of the Coalition on Human Needs to rally around the country throughout the fall to raise the minimum wage. Congress passed a $1-an-hour boost over two years, but Republican leaders rolled it into a tax-cut-for-the-rich bill that President Clinton was forced to veto.
• Launched a 21-state grassroots campaign with union, senior and community groups to lower prescription drug prices through state legislative mobilization, complimenting unions' nationwide campaign to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.

As working families entered 2001, they faced an onslaught of anti-worker attacks, the first of which overturned the nation's new workplace standard covering repetitive strain injuries, which was signed into law in December 2000 after a 10-year campaign by union health and safety activists. The ongoing anti-worker actions by Congress and President Bush—who also repealed responsible contractor rules and banned project labor agreements—go hand in hand with the administration's corporate-driven agenda of Social Security privatization, trade agreements unfettered by workers' rights or environmental protections and efforts to block passage of an improved minimum wage bill and an equal pay law.

In a hostile environment, and with domestic priorities receiving little attention in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the story about what hasn't happened on Capitol Hill has been paramount to working families. Proponents of Fast Track trade negotiating authority—which would allow the president to rush through trade agreements without congressional change—were unable to secure enough support in Congress to bring the measure to a vote, thanks in large part to working family activism. Similarly, union activists, retirees and other allies noisily protested meetings of Bush's hand-picked commission charged with privatizing a portion of Social Security—another administration priority that has failed to become a reality.

To meet new challenges, the AFL-CIO expanded its website-based Working Families Toolkit to ensure local union activists and leaders, national unions, central labor councils and state federations have rapid access to the latest arguments about key issues. The site provides downloadable worksite fliers—which can be customized by local unions—on current legislative issues such as global fairness, Social Security, safety and health and the minimum wage. The Web-based issues mobilization effort calls on working family activists to contact their lawmakers, talk with union brothers and sisters or join in actions. These new tools have been instrumental in generating tens of thousand of e-mails and phone calls to Congress and turning out tens of thousands of union members in cities across the country for demonstrations, marches and rallies.

California Machinists member Charlie Williams, who signed up with the Working Families e-Activist Network on the AFL-CIO website (www.aflcio.org), is among thousands who responded to a July 12, 2001, e-mail alert to oppose Fast Track legislation.

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"I called Congressman [Randy "Duke"] Cunningham with your toll-free number and expressed my concerns about giving President Bush Fast Track authority as expressed in your e-mail. Also, forwarded your e-mail to a lot of others who are friendly to our cause," he wrote to the e-Activist Network.

Through issues mobilization and e-activism, union members recently have:

• Rallied with injured workers at sham ergonomics forums this summer, which were held by the Department of Labor despite a decade of Occupational Safety and Health Administration hearings and independent studies that already confirmed carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive stress injuries are serious workplace hazards.
• Partnered with global activists to fight Fast Track legislation and call for worker and environmental protections in all trade agreements.
• Turned out to rally for strengthening Social Security at each meeting of the Bush-appointed commission seeking to privatize Social Security.
• Taken part with the Alliance for Retired Americans and other senior and family groups in several demonstrations calling for a prescription drug benefit for Medicare.
• Joined with immigrant workers on the steps of the Capitol to highlight the need for immigration reform.

Using 21st century tools, long-range coalition building and grassroots mobilization strategies, working families and their unions are the difference that turns a corporate-driven legislative vision into congressional action that focuses on the real needs of America's working families.

In fact, the best weapon working families have is their own voice—and they should use it, loudly and often, says Frank Mirer, UAW health and safety director, who has fought for a range of job safety issues on the federal and state levels. "Local union people, the rank and file, have no idea how influential their contacts with Congress are." At the AFL-CIO Convention, the AFL-CIO will introduce an e-mail and e-activism tool available to the entire union movement to help working families make their voices heard.

Alliance for Retired Americans

When Doris Clark visits her state legislators to talk about issues important to retirees and older Americans, the first thing they ask her is how many people she represents. "If it's just me, then I get put down at the bottom of the list. One person can scream her head off and nobody hears," says 85-year-old Clark, president of AFSCME's Illinois Retiree Chapter 31 in Jacksonville. "But if 250,000 say something, that makes a politician think twice because they could make or break him. That's why we have to work together if we are to have any hopes of living out our retirement in dignity."

Clark is one of a record number of American workers—many of them union members— nearing or in retirement. In 1999, the AFL-CIO Convention adopted the goal of providing a powerful new voice for retired workers by encouraging lifelong connections with their unions. To harness the energy and commitment of millions of retired union members who care very deeply about their country and the issues shaping life for them and their families, the AFL-CIO launched the Alliance for Retired Americans in May 2001.

Building on the efforts of the former National Council of Senior Citizens, which led the campaign to establish Medicare, the Alliance already has more than 2.5 million members. In its first month, the Alliance adopted an ambitious program to recruit activists and mobilize older Americans through a grassroots campaign to lobby Congress and the White House for passage of a Medicare prescription drug plan and to strengthen Social Security. With rallies across the country, visits to federal lawmakers and education among union members and the public, Alliance members have urged the government to provide relief from the high cost of prescription drugs for seniors and retirees and prevent privatization of Social Security, which would lead to reduced benefits, an increased retirement age—or both.

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Future issues around which the Alliance plans to mobilize members include opening up job opportunities for people 50 and older, improving Older Americans Act programs and financing, cleaning up political campaign financing and reforming election practices, gaining rights for patients in HMOs and fighting for workers' rights.

At the state level, the Alliance is working to expand local programs that help people with disabilities stay in their own homes; ensure the rights of nursing home patients; protect "lifeline" utility rates for older Americans; make tax policies fairer for seniors; and expand state-level health benefits.

"We realize that the gains we made as union members are under attack now," says Clarence Huff, 73, a retired Laborers member. "If we don't fight now, there will be nothing left when the baby boomers are ready to retire."