Organized Labor

Union Vote Puts Pro-Labor Candidates in Power Nationwide, Passes Bond Measures in California

By Roy San Filippo
Staff Writer

Union members and their families in the Bay Area and across country turned out to vote in record numbers helping sweep pro-labor candidates into office in local, state and national elections. In California, voters also approved more than $37 billion in bonds to improve the state’s long-neglected infrastructure.

According to national exit polls, union families provided two-thirds of the Democratic victories and helped to rout anti-labor forces in Washington, DC and around the nation.

“We were by far the most powerful turnout engine on the progressive side,” noted AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

Analysts agree. “The Democrats wouldn’t have won nearly as many seats without labor’s money and manpower,” said Larry J. Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia.

California labor unions put the pedal to the metal this election cycle. Statewide, unions mobilized 20,000 volunteers, distributed 1.7 million worksite flyers and talked to over 400,000 union voters.

In San Francisco, building trades affiliates mobilized record get-out-the-vote efforts – knocking on doors and calling on fellow union members to vote – which helped skew the numbers in our favor, said Mike Theriault, Secretary-Treasurer of the SF Building and Construction Trades Council. “In addition, with Nancy Pelosi, our Congresswoman and friend, in line to be the next Speaker of the House, we can be confident that our concerns and the concerns of the broader labor movement will at last get a fair hearing in Washington.”

Fears that the recent split in the AFL-CIO would diminish labor’s impact in this election turned out to be unfounded. Instead, the union movement had one of its best years in over a decade. Because of the efforts of labor, the Democrats well exceeded the 15-seat margin needed to return the US House of Representatives to Democratic leadership and gained the six seats needed for a majority in the Senate. Among union households, 74 percent voted for Democratic candidates. In addition, union members made up one in four voters

Most labor leaders agree that the vote for Democrats to reclaim the majority in both the Senate and the House was an unequivocal expression of dissatisfaction with the anti-worker policies of the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress.

In key battleground states, exit polls showed that union members voted for pro-labor candidates at a slightly higher rate than the nationwide union average – choosing endorsed candidates 76 percent of the time. While the issues of the Iraq war and corruption topped the list of concerns for most voters, economic issues were clearly on the minds of many who turned out to vote.

With the GOP handing generous tax cuts to the extremely privileged, ordinary working people felt left behind. Voters in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio approved measures that raise state minimum wage levels by $1 to $1.70 an hour and indexed to inflation.

Incoming House Democrats have pledged during the election that if they won control of the lower chamber, they would make raising the federal minimum wage —which has been stuck at $5.15 an hour for a decade.

At the congressional level, labor is expected to press hard for the Employee Free Choice Act. The bill, co-sponsored by 90 percent of House Democrats, would make organizing efforts by workers easier by increasing penalties on employers that illegally fire workers. Senate Republicans are expected to filibuster the legislation.

Labor’s endorsed candidates won seven of the nine statewide offices by talking about the issues that are important to working class people: jobs, healthcare, affordable prescription medication and education. Analysts point out that in the two races labor lost, the victorious Republican candidates won not because they embraced a hard-right, anti-worker agenda, but because they sounded like moderate Democrats on many of the issues.

Phil Angelides topped Arnold Schwarzenegger in the union strongholds of San Francisco and Los Angeles counties because of well-organized campaigns by labor, including member-to-member outreach, literature and flyers on the differences between the two candidates and effective mobilization of the membership. However in the end, Schwarzenegger simply had too much star power statewide and won largely because he did an about face on the anti-worker agenda that he embraced only a year ago.

The task for the labor movement now will be to keep a watchful eye on Schwarzenegger to ensure that he doesn’t regress and listen only to his Big Business Supporters. His defeat in last November’s special election forced him to run on what was essentially a Democratic platform. Now labor must ensure that he spends the next four years governing like the centrist he claims to be.