(The following story by Randolph Heaster and Diane Stafford appeared on The Kansas City Star website on September 6. Brother L.D. Jones is a member of BLET Division 336 in Osawatomie, Kan., and former BLE National Legislative Representative.)
KANSAS CITY — Last year, Matt Mapes, organizer for International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 124, began arranging meetings in area counties to find union members to run for public office.
“So many school districts were bidding out their work to the worst and cheapest contractors,” he said. “Shoddy construction was being done, and it wasn’t just a union-nonunion thing. I just got fed up with it.”
Those concerns blossomed into a campaign to find more union members to run for office in their local communities. As a result, 10 out of 15 union workers who ran in six area counties in April 2003 were elected. Results last April were not as encouraging, Mapes said, when only five union members were elected.
“There’s a pretty heavy business presence on these public bodies, so there’s definitely a need for more working people to have a voice in government,” Mapes said. “But it’s difficult for working people to get the time off to attend these meetings, or even be able to afford to take the time off. Our folks often need that paycheck every week.”
Getting time to devote to public service is just one obstacle that union members face in what is being billed as a critical period for organized labor, which has seen its numbers, and therefore its clout, whittled down by factors from technology to outsourcing.
Labor Day traditionally kicks off the crucial, final two months of campaigning in a presidential election year. This year, union members are looking for new ways to extend their influence, by getting members elected to local offices and by trying to oust an administration it finds particularly nettlesome. Organized labor has butted heads with the Bush administration on issues from changes in overtime rules to trade policy and the loss of manufacturing jobs.
“I think … organized labor regards this as one of the most critical elections in history,” said Clete Daniel, labor history professor at Cornell University. “They are facing the most anti-union administration since the Reagan presidency.”
The AFL-CIO is spending $45 million in battleground states such as Missouri in an effort to elect John Kerry president. On Thursday, the last night of the Republican National Convention, it focused on its own members. More than 15,000 union foot soldiers nationally volunteered to make face-to-face contact with their union brethren.
James L. Chapman was one of a few hundred union members who walked Kansas City neighborhoods.
“The middle class is being eliminated by the policies of the present administration,” said Chapman, a member of American Postal Workers Union Local 67. “Since President Bush was elected, we’ve lost 21⁄2 million jobs. The 1 million jobs that have been created don’t pay enough for those workers to take a vacation every now and then. We need to turn this around.”
Not all union members vote Democrat, of course.
In the last election, about 37 percent of voters living in union households voted for Bush. Judy Ancel, director of the Institute for Labor Studies in Kansas City, said the gun-control issue was a big factor for union workers who voted for Bush.
A Republican Party official in Missouri said the Bush campaign is not conceding the vote of rank-and-file union workers to Kerry.
“The Democrats and John Kerry are beholden to the labor bosses, who in turn contribute thousands of dollars to their campaign,” said Paul Sloca, spokesman for the Missouri Republican Party. “President Bush has a plan for workers, and he’s taking that message out to workers in Missouri and around the country.”
Sloca said the Bush administration’s new overtime rules will make 6.7 million workers earning less than $23,600 annually eligible for overtime pay. The AFL-CIO has countered that 8 million other workers will lose overtime eligibility.
Disputes like this have organized labor putting the clout it retains behind Kerry.
While the national AFL-CIO is spending $45 million, the affiliate unions are also using their own funds. For example, the Service Employees International Union is spending $65 million to get Kerry elected and has sent volunteers to help in battleground states such as Missouri.
John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, said during a conference call last week that while labor will spend millions, its strength lies with its “people power.”
“Our members have never been more engaged and motivated as they see the effects of Bush’s policies on their lives — our union halls have been overwhelmed by volunteers,” he said.
Corporations generally outspend unions by a wide margin on elections, but some criticize the AFL-CIO’s attempts to sway the election outcome.
The creation of so-called 527 organizations has allowed labor unions to divert more money to committees for political activity, said Justin Hakes, a spokesman for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
“We think obviously that each group has a right to express its views,” he said. “But we have a problem with the idea that people with different opinions are forced to fund political activities through union dues.”
The AFL-CIO also faces the challenge of having fewer members to mobilize. The percentage of the U.S. work force with union representation bounced between 22 percent and 24 percent in the late 1970s, then began to plummet.
From 1980 to 2003, union membership fell steadily — down to less than 13 percent of workers in 2003, according to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.
That translates to about 15.8 million union members. An additional 1.67 million workers have no union affiliation but work in jobs that are covered by unions or employee association contracts.
Organized labor has taken a page from the playbook of other political groups and urged members to run for local offices, school boards, fire district boards, city councils and seats in state government.
Among the more high-profile union members in public office is Missouri Rep. Craig Bland, who represents the 43rd District. Bland also works the production line at Ford Motor Co. in Claycomo. Lee Jones, a Topeka railroad engineer and member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, is the Democrat challenging Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas in November.
Bob Gregory, mayor of Belton and a member of IBEW Local 124, was elected in April 2003 after first serving as an alderman. Gregory, who calls himself “a conservative Democrat,” initially ran for public office because he objected to the city spending money on a golf course it did not own. The city now owns the course.
He said his union affiliation has never hurt him when running for office or in city issues. One time when a union contractor was not fulfilling the terms of a city project when he was alderman, Gregory said, he led the charge to rectify the situation, regardless of his union membership.
While Gregory said partisan politics rarely becomes a factor in municipal issues, Scott Mackey finds himself immersed in party politics.
Mackey is a ward captain for the Democratic Party in Wyandotte County. He also is a postal worker belonging to National Postal Mail Handlers Union Local 297.
Mackey organizes a monthly breakfast for the Wyandotte County Democratic Party and also is helping the Wyandotte County Democratic Central Committee hold a “get out the vote” training session on Sept. 25 at Kansas City Kansas Community College.
Mackey would like to see more workers involved in party politics.
“Working people know they’re getting the wrong end of the deal, but it takes an effort to want to get involved,” he said. “If you’re new to politics, you may not feel comfortable with a new situation.”