Labor weighs in against the right

by Fred Gaboury

This article was reprinted from the March 2, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

BAL HARBOUR, Fla. - AFL-CIO President John Sweeney kicked off the federation's 1996 election campaign with a blistering attack on Pat Buchanan, the anti-labor, anti- people Republican presidential candidate.

"Pat Buchanan is a racist, he's anti-Semitic, he bashes women right along with labor and immigrants and he's a believer in supply side economics," Sweeney said in a statement. He added that Buchanan supported economic policies that have transferred "billions of dollars from the tattered pocketbooks of middle-income Americans to the silk- lined purses of the rich over the past 15 years."

However, Sweeney said, "I don't think working Americans are going to be fooled by a presidential candidate who talks the talk but won't walk the walk."

Sweeney said the AFL-CIO is going all-out to defeat the right-wing Republicans in the current election campaign. The federation is building on the grass roots campaign that generated a near half-million telephone calls to Capitol Hill and the White House that blunted attacks by the "radical right" to roll back 50 years of social progress.

He said Oregon's election of Ron Wyden, the state's first Democratic U.S. Senator in 30 years, was a harbinger of what is possible this November. Wyden credits the AFL-CIO, which mobilized 300 union activists during the campaign who in turn contacted 100,000 voters, with being a decisive influence in the campaign that defeated a right-wing extremist.

Sweeney said the Oregon win hit the "nerve center" of the Gingrich extremists, prompting Republican campaign committees in both House and Senate to file complaints with the Federal Election Commission to limit the ability of unions to participate in legislative and political battles.

Noting the Wall Street Journal charge that the federation is "ruining politics," the council said the AFL-CIO "wears these specious charges as a badge of honor" and as "an incentive to continue to win and engage and empower our members and workers in America."

Gerald McEntee, chair of the Executive Council's Political Action Committee, told reporters the AFL-CIO would spearhead an effort to mobilize at least 100 unionists in each of the 435 congressional districts during "Union Fall." He described the campaign as an "effort of an unprecedented scale" that will be formally kicked off with a special convention in March where AFL-CIO leaders hope to raise $35 million to finance the campaign to "reclaim America."

McEntee, president of the State, County and Municipal Employees Union, said the convention would be asked to approve a special 15 cents per month per member assessment. The convention is expected to endorse President Clinton's reelection. This year's endorsement procedure is a departure from past years when the AFL-CIO General Board, made up of the presidents of the federation's 78 affiliated unions, made presidential endorsements.

Tom Balanoff, president of Service Employees Local 73 in Chicago, told the World he liked the idea of a special convention and the decision to spend money the "right way -- putting activists into the field with a focus on issues rather than candidates."

McEntee said the AFL-CIO is targeting the "Gang of 73" -- the 73 freshmen Republicans who are the strike force of the GOP drive to impose the Contract on America. Twelve of the 73 were elected with 50 percent of the vote or less, the AFL-CIO points out. Another 19 were elected with margins of 51-52 percent -- making all of them vulnerable to the growing backlash against the right.

Donald Judge, executive secretary of the Montana State AFL- CIO, laughed when asked about assigning 100 organizers to a congressional district. "Montana is the fourth largest state and has only one CD," he said, adding that he hoped the state would get special attention. "It's an open seat and the outcome could be very close," he said when contacted in his office in Helena.

In a statement outlining its election strategy, the executive council admitted that the GOP blitz following the 1994 elections had caught the federation off guard. "The intensity of the assault ... was harsher than expected," the council said, adding that Republican extremists had a message that "captured the imagination" of nearly 40 percent of union-member voters.

A resolution adopted by the council said the federation and its affiliates have made "substantial efforts" to understand how workers think about their economic and family situations and their relationship to national legislative and political questions.

"What became evident was a profound cynicism about federal legislators and politicians -- and enormous anger at a political system that workers feel has failed them," the statement said. Union meetings, polls and focus groups found that "working people saw little or no connection between their daily concerns and federal legislation and politics" and had "essentially no understanding of what was at stake in the 1994 elections and the consequences of voting their frustrations and anger."