Bal Harbour, FL
After the 1994 election, the federation and many unions went back to the rank and file membership -- through meetings, polls, focus groups and other forms of inquiry -- to reexamine the connections working people make between their concerns as workers and family members and their participation in elections.
What became evident was a profound cynicism about federal legislators and politicians -- and enormous anger at a political system that workers feel has failed them. We found through poll and focus group research that working people see virtually no connection between their daily concerns and federal legislation and politics. There was essentially no understanding of what working people had at stake in the 1994 election and what consequence voting their frustrations and anger could have on their daily lives.
With the new radically conservative Republican majorities now in the U.S. House and Senate, the AFL-CIO and its unions must reconnect with union members in order to repulse the most severe threat to the interests of working people than any in the past fifty years.
Grassroots Legislative Activism
Since the 1994 elections, the federation and its unions have made substantial efforts to understand how workers think about their economic and family situations and how best to rebuild the connections between those concerns and the consequences of federal legislation and politics.
Enormous energy has been devoted to working with local union leaders and members to make them aware that the programs they have told their unions are important to working Americans are being seriously threatened by the legislative agenda of the Republican congress.
Our approach to encouraging grassroots activism has been to provide information to working families and to ask them to act on that information by engaging their member of congress as well as by informing other working families in their communities.
Over 140 meetings between groups of local union members and members of congress were held last year -- more than in any previous year. These meetings were attended by over 2,400 unionists from 62 unions. These meetings serve the dual purpose of lobbying the member of congress and educating union members about the quality of their congressional representation.
During five congressional recesses, a number of congressional districts were targeted for intensive grassroots lobbying activities. Full-time staff from the federation and national unions were assigned to assist local Central Labor Councils in organizing local unions and their members around federal legislative issues of concern to them. These intensive efforts included a wide range of activities such as attending representatives' town meetings, holding press conferences, meeting with the representative, holding demonstrations, leafleting worksites, circulating petitions and urging unionists to call their member of congress.
A toll-free 800 number set up to facilitate calls to members of congress about legislative issues logged in over 500,000 calls. Over 2 million pieces of informational mail were sent into union homes.
Paid media and free publicity were significant components of grassroots legislative activity. TV and radio ads were aired in congressional districts where a full-time organizer was working with local unionists on a range of legislative activities. The ads were aimed at educating and energizing workers around issues of concern to them as much as at influencing the vote of the member in the targeted district.
While the 1995 activities represented an enormous step forward from previous years, we understand there is a lot of work to be done. Federal legislative issues seem very remote to many members. A great deal of support needs to be provided by national unions to the local level to create sufficient awareness and sense of urgency to boost local activity.
In 1996, legislative grassroots activity should build on the accomplishments of 1995. Our aim this year is to broaden local bases of informed and involved workers, to train members in grassroots legislative activities, and to do more longer-range planning for local legislative activities. We will continue to use our research findings to determine how best to engage members on federal legislative issues.
The political activism of 1996 will be carried out in a manner that leads to greater legislative activism after the election. Working men and women will work hard to elect people who are sympathetic to the concerns of workers, but they then must continue their involvement to monitor and hold accountable these members as they make legislative decisions.
Legislative Agenda
The issues working men and women cared about and worked on intensively in 1995 are still on the congressional agenda in 1996. We will continue to defend Medicare beneficiaries from cost increases, Medicaid beneficiaries from the loss of their guaranteed coverage, children of working families from loss of access to education, and workers from the loss of their wage and workplace standards protections. It is particularly offensive that the cuts in these programs are being proposed to funds tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
At a time when workers are anxious about their economic security and corporations are making record profits, we will urge the Congress to look hard at the extensive corporate tax breaks and subsidies for any revenues that are needed for worthwhile national purposes.
The recent National Governors' Association (NGA) proposals regarding Medicaid and welfare reform threaten to undermine both programs in order to reduce costs to the States. The Medicaid proposal aims to end any meaningful entitlement as well as undercut medical facilities which serve disproportionately poor populations and the disabled. The welfare reform proposal leaves families without security and, because there are no adequate anti-displacement provisions, threaten existing workers' jobs. We oppose the NGA proposals and urge the President and the Congress to oppose them as well.
The threats to jobs and wages are multiple in the current congress. There are proposals to repeal Davis-Bacon, the Services Contracts Act and even the minimum wage. The 40-hour work week is under attack. There are bills to eviscerate OSHA. Collective bargaining is under attack both through broad efforts, such as the bills to establish company unions, and through targeted attacks, such as those against mass transit workers and FAA employees, including air traffic controllers. Careless policies, like the effort to deregulate the electric utility industry, can cause massive job losses. Most recently a preliminary report for the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations recommended wholesale exemption of state and local employees from the application of FLSA, FMLA, OSHA, and wage standard acts. All of these efforts should be repulsed, and we will work diligently to defeat them.
As well, some States are trying to reduce their costs at the expense of working people. States -- through corporate welfare and cuts in Medicaid and other safety net programs -- are engaged in a "race to the bottom," at the expense of working families. Proposition 187, adopted in California in 1994, was a cruel attempt to cut state costs at the expense of immigrants; this effort was enjoined by the courts. The AFL-CIO condemned this initiative and, more recently, condemns and will oppose similar efforts now underway in Florida for a 1996 ballot initiative to cut of public services to immigrants.