WASHINGTON—In what was advertised as a working session on labor’s plans for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, union leaders turned a massive zoom call on election plans into an enthusiastic pep rally for the presumed Democratic presidential nominee instead.
All reported not just their own endorsement of Harris but high enthusiasm and unity from the rank-and-file. “Our unity gives me a lot of optimism,” said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond. Harris “shares our values,” added AFSCME President Lee Saunders.
Virtually every speaker advocated good old-fashioned precinct work. Shoe leather, door-knocking, phone-banking and one-on-one contacts—the tried and true campaign tactics labor does best—will win the election for Harris. Even if, as one speaker admitted, it means “difficult conversations” with often-skeptical colleagues and other voters.
One enthusiasm example: North America’s Building Trades President Sean McGarvey reported 500 building trades unionists gathered at the University of Michigan’s football stadium after their latest day on the hustings for Harris. They’ve been campaigning for her for two weeks in that key swing state,
“We’re knocking on doors every day and our goal is also to have 500 canvassers come in from out of state” to help knock on doors in Phoenix, Ariz., capital of another key swing state, added David Bonilla, a Unite HERE member who works at Sky Harbor Airport there.
Al Herman of Theatrical and Stage Employees Local 927 in Atlanta provided a third example. The 25-year veteran helped erect the stage and the lighting—along with dozens of his colleagues—for a massive Harris rally there after she opened her White House bid.
Rally was “different”
“Yesterday’s rally was far different” from other mass events Herman worked on. The crew was enthusiastic even as they toiled in the Georgia sun “because our candidate is our hope for the future.
“Georgia is prepared to turn out to vote again and keep our state blue,” he exclaimed. Actually, four years ago, Georgia went Democratic—narrowly—for the first time in decades, as unionists pushed Biden to a highly contested win.
Unionists then followed with massive volunteer efforts to successfully elect Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock to the U.S. Senate, producing a narrow majority there.
“The excitement is more than ever before,” said AFT (Teachers) President Randi Weingarten. “There’s a sense of potential progress and opportunity…We’ve been with Harris in these fights for freedom: Freedom to make reproductive choices, freedom to vote, freedom to join a union.”
Still others told specific stories they’ll take to the campaign trail to tell listeners how the Biden-Harris administration helped them. They expect a continuation if Harris wins.
Ternesha Burroughs, a math teacher from Osseo, Minn., and an Education Minnesota member, recalled struggling for 15 years to pay off student loan debt. The federal government has a loan forgiveness program for workers who go into public service, including teachers. But Trump Education Secretary Elizabeth “Betsy” DeVos virtually shut it down, especially for public school teachers, whom GOP big giver DeVos hates—along with public school students.
Then Biden’s Education Department came in, revived the program, and got the lenders to forgive Burroughs’s remaining debt a year ago. “I’ll vote for Harris because I don’t want to go back to school vouchers, greedy loan companies and homophobia,” all characteristics of DeVos’s rule.
“Nurses remember the relief they felt on Day 1 of the Biden-Harris administration, after four years in which Donald Trump did nothing to protect us from the coronavirus pandemic,” said National Nurses United Executive Director Bonnie Castillo, RN. Harris “is a candidate who sees us because she is us.”
Electrical Workers President Kenny Cooper told listeners that Harris, as VP, cast the tie-breaking Senate vote to solve the financial problems plaguing multi-employer pension plans. Those plans, common in construction, seafaring, groceries, trucking and several other industries, took a big hit from the financier-caused Great Recession of 2008. It lasted for several years and hit workers hard.
The Republican solution, enacted a decade ago, would preserve the plans for future beneficiaries by cutting current pension payouts by up to half. Harris cast that vote for the plan authored by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, working with union legislative reps, to revoke all cuts. Biden signed the bill, featuring long-term loan guarantees, conditioned on federal approval of plans’ recovery programs.
And in a big sign of labor unity, the leaders speaking to tens of thousands of unionists via zoom included National Education Association President Becky Pringle and Service Employees Secretary-Treasurer Rocio Saenz. NEA and SEIU are the nation’s two largest unions, with more than five million members combined—and both are independent of the AFL-CIO.
Nimble and unified
“For the past ten days” since Harris announced her candidacy after her boss, President Joe Biden, withdrew from the race, “this federation has been nimble and unified,” said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Redmond. He noted the speed and agility of the agreement—it was unanimous and it occurred the day after Harris jumped in—is unusual.
“I know this energy will carry us through the last 96 days of this campaign,” between now and Election Day, predicted AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, who opened and emceed the hour-and-a-half session. And unions and their allies “will be making history by sending the first African-American woman to the White House—and by sending Donald Trump packing.”
Trump, the former Republican president, is his party’s nominee again. Current Democratic President Joe Biden and Harris, now his VP, beat Trump four years ago.
Speakers split between praising specific Biden-Harris administration accomplishments which helped them, their members and the U.S. at large, and castigating Trump for the anti-worker actions of his prior Republican regime. Biden beat Trump four years ago.
“Vice President Harris is good for the economy and good for working families,” said IBEW President Ken Cooper.
AFT’s Weingarten said she’d tell voters “they have the opportunity to change the economy where every family has the freedom to strive, and not to struggle.”
“We’re going to tell them [voters] about the crazy stuff coming from the other side,” added Clayola Brown, a special adviser to Shuler on racial justice and strategic partnerships and longtime head of the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, one of two AFL-CIO constituency groups for African Americans. “We don’t want to go back to the old times” Trump touts. “This is not rocket science.”
“Federal workers survived four years of attacks” by Trump, said Tryshanda Moton, president of the NASA Council of the Professional and Technical Engineers. “At the end, he tried to gut the non-partisan civil service and turn it into a government of Trump loyalists.
“The Biden administration sees federal workers as partners” who “work in the public interest. Kamala Harris understands this.” Trump, said Moton, sees public workers and unions “as a swamp.”
Like Biden and Harris, “federal workers swear an oath to uphold the Constitution,” said Everett Kelley, president of the Government Employees, the largest federal worker union. “Donald Trump and J.D. Vance”—Trump’s running mate—“want to strip us of our rights, violate the Constitution and replace us with political flunkies.
“Trump and his Project 2025 will destroy our unions and we all know that,” Kelley said of the Republican platform crafted by former top Trump regime officials and the radical right Heritage Foundation. “If you believe in freedom, if you believe in democracy, let’s come together.”
But it was Bonilla, the youthful cashier from Phoenix, who best summed up the choice this year between Harris and Trump.
“Do we want a president who is incredibly horrible to us?” he asked, referring to Trump. “Or do we want a president who does things with us?” That’s Harris.
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