Unions return to Democratic fold for 2012 election
After a falling out with the party, labor is back with
cash and other support, driven largely by Republican
attacks on collective bargaining.
By Matea Gold and Melanie Mason
The Los Angeles Times
February 19, 2012
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/19/nation/la-na-labor-politics-20120220
Reporting from Washington

Last May, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka stood a few
blocks from the White House and issued a stern warning:
Union members could not be counted on as the Democrats'
foot soldiers anymore.

"If leaders aren't blocking the wrecking ball and
advancing working families' interests, then working
people will not support them," he said in a speech at
the National Press Club.


Flash forward to today: Labor appears squarely back in
the Democrats' corner for the 2012 election -- pushed
there in large part by Republican attacks on collective
bargaining rights for public employees.

Those and other anti-union measures are rallying
organized labor to the side of its longtime Democratic
allies, and not just in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio
and Michigan, where they are battling efforts aimed at
curbing union organizing.

The country's biggest unions also have played a central
role in helping a network of federal pro-Democratic
"super PACs" get off the ground, pouring more than $4
million into those groups in 2011, even as many wealthy
liberals kept their checkbooks closed.

And some major labor groups have even inserted
themselves into the Republican presidential primaries
with ads that take aim at White House hopeful Mitt
Romney.

The decision by unions to act again as an early
firewall for Democrats speaks to how stepped-up
hostility by Republicans has curtailed labor's hope to
be an independent political force.

Across the country, state GOP lawmakers -- many of whom
were swept into office by the tea-party-fueled wave
that dominated the 2010 midterm election -- are
aggressively pushing right-to-work laws that would make
it harder for unions to collect dues. And in the
presidential campaign, Romney has taken a particularly
antagonistic posture against what he calls "big labor."

"I think we'll be more engaged in 2012 than certainly
in the last 20 years," said Mike Podhorzer, political
director for the AFL-CIO, a federation of 57 unions.
"Working people realize in a way they never have what a
threat the current Republican platform is to their
well-being."

Organized labor is now expected to match or slightly
exceed the estimated $400 million that unions spent to
help elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats in
2008, according to Marick F. Masters, a business
professor who studies the labor movement at Michigan's
Wayne State University.

The political power of unions was amplified by the
Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United case freeing
corporations and unions to do independent political
spending. That means that organized labor no longer has
to limit its outreach to union members during its
vaunted door-to-door field programs. Unions can also
pay for political ads directly with dues, rather than
through separate political action committees.

So far, however, labor groups have been cautious about
exploiting that tool, wary that using member dues for
television spots would trigger criticism. For now,
union leaders say they plan to focus their political
spending on expanding their ground efforts to turn out
voters.

One of the biggest unions, the American Federation of
State, County and Municipal Employees, plans to put in
as much as $100 million this year -- money that will
largely benefit Obama and other Democrats at the local,
state and national levels. "What's the alternative?"
Gerald McEntee, the federation's president, told the
Washington Post in October.

Last month, AFSCME spent $1 million in Florida on a
television ad attacking Romney for his ties to a
medical company that admitted to defrauding Medicare --
the first time the union had weighed in during a
Republican primary. The Service Employees International
Union, working with the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities
USA Action, ran its own anti-Romney radio ads in
Florida and Nevada.

Labor officials insist their recent political activity
does not mean they are a de facto arm of the Democratic
Party, a frequent charge made by conservatives. Larry
Scanlon, AFSCME's political director, noted that the
union backed GOP officials at the local and state
level.

But the political climate has made it increasingly
difficult to find pro-labor Republicans on a national
level.

"We're trying, because we want to work with anybody who
wants to work with us, but the options have not been
great," said Brandon Davis, political director for the
service employees' union.

The aggression on the right led to a shift in labor's
strategy from what it was less than a year ago, when
union leaders complained that Democrats were not
fighting hard enough for their issues. They ticked off
a litany of complaints, including the failure of
Congress to pass "card check" legislation that would
make union organizing easier and Obama's support for a
trade deal with Colombia, where union members have been
killed.

Last April, Harold Schaitberger, president of the
International Assn. of Firefighters, announced the
group would cease its contributions to federal
candidates, citing a lack of support for organized
labor.

"Where are the congressional delegations en masse
standing up and fighting with us?" he asked at the
time.

The freeze didn't last long. By December, citing the
passage of legislation that included $730 million in
grants to local fire departments, the union announced
it would reopen the spigot to congressional candidates.

In fact, relations between the firefighters union and
Democrats had warmed months earlier, when the union
quietly cut a $250,000 check to the House Majority PAC,
a super PAC supporting Democrats in House races.

Labor observers said that and other donations to
Democratic super PACs revealed that -- despite their
calls for autonomy -- unions still relied heavily on
Democrats to shape their political fate.

"In this business, if you want to play, you've got to
pay," Masters said. "And so despite what you might say
about wanting to be nonpartisan or more independent,
when these PACs come to you and say, 'We're at a
pivotal time period and we need your support. Can you
help?' it's hard to say no."

Indeed, unions provided the seed money for the four
major Democratic super PACs last year, contributing
$4.2 million, more than 30% of the $13.6 million the
groups raised altogether, according to an analysis by
the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Washington Bureau.

More than $2 million of the $3 million that the House
Majority PAC raised in 2011 came from labor. And nearly
a quarter of the money brought in by Priorities USA
Action came from a single union: Service Employees
International, which gave $1 million.

The AFL-CIO has largely steered clear of financing the
Democratic super PACs, choosing instead to launch its
own, called Workers' Voices. Last year, the federation
put $2.2 million from its general treasury into
Workers' Voices, which raised $3.7 million overall.

Podhorzer said the super PAC would finance field
efforts, not television ads, and would be used to
strengthen the independent role that Trumka laid out
last year.

"It obviously sounds somewhat farcical because the
Republican Party has made itself so anti-labor, but the
paradigm shift that he was trying to effect was to get
out of the box of thinking that political parties or
politicians could be the salvation for workers," he
said. "Our support can't be counted on by any
politician as a matter of course."

____________________________________________

PortsideLabor aims to provide material of interest to
people on the left that will help them to interpret the
world and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

PS Labor Archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate