The following is a statement from Liz Shuler, President of the AFL-CIO:
In the coming months, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has the unique opportunity to once again bring working people back to its center. The labor movement represents roughly 20% of the voting members of the DNC. Union members voted for Democratic endorsed candidates from the top of the ticket on down at a much higher rate than the general public. As a diverse movement with organizing at its core, we know how to mobilize with a resonant message to win.
The labor movement engages in electoral politics because we want elected officials who are responsive to working people and who fight for policies that improve our lives and strengthen our rights and freedoms, rather than attack and destroy them.
In this election, the labor movement’s mobilization of our members was built aroundeconomic issues with broad appeal. In a time of heightened cynicism and distrust of politics, those messages were even more salient because they were delivered by voters’ trusted fellow union members at the door, in the workplace, on the phone, and through digital advertising. If there were more workers represented by unions, and as a result more voters, the outcome of the 2024 election would have been different.
The election of a new slate of DNC officers is an opportunity to change the course of the Democratic Party and to center its purpose and messaging around the economic and social needs of working people. It’s time to stop doing business as usual. In order to win future elections, the party must refocus and be innovative in its approach to communicating with working people with a message that meets them where they are. It must convert our shared values into action, year-round. Now is the time for change.
As labor DNC delegates, we will measure our support for the next slate of DNC leaders using the following principles:
- DNC leadership must have a strong connection to working people and unions. That means having extensively worked with—or even for—labor in the past. In addition to understanding working-class values, DNC leaders need to know how to organize and how to talk to working people. Having leaders who prioritize big-money corporate donors is flatly unacceptable.
- The party must restore its connection to working people by focusing on the core economic issues they care most about. That means working closely with the labor movement to develop an economic framework of values-based policies and messaging that speaks to ALL working people, regardless of age, race, gender, or ideology. To be the party of working people, Democrats need to talk openly and often with all working people about kitchen table economic issues families think about daily.
- Party leaders must commit to a robust, 365-day-a-year field program that engages workers in our communities. The only way Democrats can break through the political noise with a working-class agenda is to have a year-round infrastructure in place to reach voters where they are.
- The party must address its failure to communicate successfully with working people and invest in innovative and creative methods of messaging instead of simply enriching the consulting class. Democrats must better utilize a variety of community-based platforms to reach working people wherever they are on the issues that matter most, not just near election time, but all the time.
As the DNC moves ahead with its selection process for its next leadership team, working people need to be at the table. Every Democrat running for leadership should be able to clearly articulate an answer to this fundamental question: If you were elected as chair, what would you do to elevate labor and working people’s voices and influence within the Democratic Party (please provide specifics)?
Contact: Steve Smith, 202-637-5018