[Excerpt] New political action often involves testing ideas and approaches that do not always come together immediately or as envisioned. The political agenda of the Washington State Labor Council was formulated as one of three fronts in a comprehensive strategy to help the labor movement gain momentum over the next decade. This agenda was shaped during a tumultuous period of highs and lows in the political climate of Washington. Before 1988, the labor movement participated in politics through a traditional COPE mechanism. They turned to a more activist approach and had stunning victories by 1993, only to face a more sobering situation with business victories in 1994. LRR asked Lynn Feekin, an associate editor with the Review, to explore the recent political action experiences of the council with its Research Director, Jeff Johnson

Feekin, Lynn

English

DigitalCommons@ILR

Labor Research Review 
Volume 1 | Number 22 
Labor and Political Action Article 7 
1994 
Building the Road As We Travel: New Political Coalitions and the 
Washington State Labor Council 
Lynn Feekin 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@ILR. It has been accepted for inclusion 
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© 1994 by Labor Research Review 
Building the Road As We Travel: New Political Coalitions and the Washington 
State Labor Council 
Abstract 
[Excerpt] New political action often involves testing ideas and approaches that do not always come 
together immediately or as envisioned. The political agenda of the Washington State Labor Council was 
formulated as one of three fronts in a comprehensive strategy to help the labor movement gain 
momentum over the next decade. This agenda was shaped during a tumultuous period of highs and lows 
in the political climate of Washington. Before 1988, the labor movement participated in politics through a 
traditional COPE mechanism. They turned to a more activist approach and had stunning victories by 1993, 
only to face a more sobering situation with business victories in 1994. LRR asked Lynn Feekin, an 
associate editor with the Review, to explore the recent political action experiences of the council with its 
Research Director, Jeff Johnson. 
Keywords 
Washington State Labor Council, COPE, Jeff Johnson 
This article is available in Labor Research Review: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/lrr/vol1/iss22/7 

L A B O R R E S E A R C H R E V I E W # 2 2 
Building the Road 
As We Travel: 
New Political Coalitions and 
the Washington State Labor Council 
• Lynn Feekin 
New political action often involves testing ideas and approaches that do not 
always come together immediately or as envisioned. The political agenda 
of the Washington State Labor Council was formulated as one of three fronts 
in a comprehensive strategy to help the labor movement gain momentum 
over the next decade. This agenda was shaped during a tumultuous period 
of highs and lows in the political climate of Washington. Before 1988, the 
labor movement participated in politics through a traditional COPE mech-
anism. They turned to a more activist approach and had stunning victories 
by 1993, only to face a more sobering situation with business victories in 
1994. LRR asked Lynn Feekin, an associate editor with the Review, to explore 
the recent political action experiences of the council with its Research Direc-
tor, Jeff Johnson. 
• • • 
LRR: What is different about the way the Washington State Labor 
Council approaches political action and legislative activity now com-
pared to the past? 
Johnson: Until 1988, the Washington State Labor Council practiced 
a fairly traditional COPE (Committee on Political Education) strategy 
in terms of electoral politics and the legislature. Basically, that meant 
raising as much money as we could and throwing it at Democrats, so that 
• Lynn Feekin: Lynn is a professor at the Labor Education and Research Center at the University 
of Oregon in Eugene. 
\ 14 Labor Research Review #22 
if you put a "D" after your name you got money-if you put an "R" after 
your name, you didn't. It was pretty straightforward. Top-down and 
money-oriented. Even though some folks in local unions and central 
labor councils had developed fairly decent candidate questionnaires, 
there was no accountability behind the questionnaires, so things weren't 
taken that seriously. 
Since 1988, things have changed. We developed a more activist 
approach by forming local labor legislative committees. 
We moved towards a much more coalition-building approach, both 
within the House of Labor and outside of it. Within labor, two orga-
nizations were formed. One, the Labor Roundtable, is a collection of 
unions that meet every two weeks during the campaign season and 
invites folks in from the Democratic caucus, the House and the Sen-
ate, to make presentations. It is a way of tracking of who is running, how 
the campaigns are going, and who needs what. A way to get better polit-
ically organized. 
LRR: And this was with youi friends or with all candidates? 
Johnson: With our friends. It's a support mechanism, a solidarity mech-
anism. It was a way for politically active unions to compare notes and 
strategies as well as a way for us to touch base with the formal Demo-
cratic caucus recruitment machine. 
A second organization, known as the "Big Four" consisted of the state 
fed, the Washington Education Association (WEA), the Trial Lawyers 
Association, and AFSCME. Those four, the biggest money donors on 
the progressive side of politics in the state, came together to target 
candidates. It is a very loose organization, and no one is bound by any 
candidate. But there has to be unanimity on a particular person for Big 
Four support. 
Some of the more interesting coalition work happened with groups 
outside of labor and the state labor council. We formed what was called 
the Livable Income Campaign, spearheaded by the state labor council, 
the Washington Association of Churches, the local branch of Citizen 
Action, the National Organization of Women, the Fair Budget Action 
Coalition which is a welfare rights group, and a myriad of other com-
munity and environmental groups. 
Our state minimum wage at the time was $2.30 an hour, so any busi-
ness that didn't do interstate commerce could pay that. This was our 
first real taste of working in coalition on a sustained effort. After a legis-
lative defeat to raise the minimum wage, the coalition decided to run 
a [ballot] initiative in Washington state, which required an incredible 
amount of fundraising and organization. So working together, we drafted 
\ Labor and Political Action 15 
the initiative, put together a campaign headquarters, hired people— 
organizers—and then worked within our own organizations to collect 
signatures. We were able to gather the second largest number of sig-
natures on an initiative in the state's history back then. And we won. 
We were able to raise the minimum wage in two jumps to $3.85 and 
hour and then up to $4.25 an hour. The state labor council dropped 
something like $50,000 into the initiative in outright money and prob-
ably another $60,000 for in-kind support. So, it was a major commit-
ment in terms of financial resources. And it was a major, major victory 
and showed us what working in a coalition could do. 
LRR: And is the coalition still around? 
Johnson: Formally, no. In fact, after we won, there were a series of dis-
cussions on whether we should keep the organization alive or not. The 
decision by the state fed president then was no. Because while he gained 
a lot of political mileage from that victory, he essentially was leery of 
tying the state labor council into a long-term coalition, afraid of shar-
ing the power. So while there were progressive moments, there were reac-
tionary moments as well. It was a kind of an interesting leadership period 
at the state labor council. 
Let me mention one thing we did that year that was instrumental in 
showing how we did things differently. We actually challenged the 
Democratic party for the first time in the state's history. The Senate 
Democrats were in the minority by a 25-24 margin and were looking to 
labor to blindly support all of their candidates in hopes of winning back 
the majority. We didn't play ball and in fact we challenged a conser-
vative Democrat who had consistently voted against budgetary items, 
hurting social service programs as well as state employees. We went 
after him. We recruited our own candidate, dumped a ton of money 
into the race, and we lost. We made a lot of mistakes in that process 
but there's no question that we shook up the status quo and scared the 
pants off a lot of politicians. 
LRR: What was the process that led you to say, well we are going to 
have a moie activist approach, we are going to recruit more labor can-
didates, and we are going to use coalition-building. How did those 
decisions get made and at what level was this dialogue going on? 
Johnson: It became real clear to us that, regardless of whether we had 
a majority or not, we needed a more grass roots approach to lobbying. 
Since the Washington State Legislature is a part-time citizen-legisla-
ture, once you are down in the legislative session, you are basically talk-
\ 16 Labor Research Review #22 
ing about crisis lobbying. You are not talking about organizing or edu-
cating. You are trying to do your last bit of persuasion. And no matter 
how gooa a relationship someone from the state labor council had devel-
oped with them, the conscientious legislator is going to call back to 
their district and talk to the people they actually know and care about. 
So if we didn't educate them at the local level, it was too late to edu-
cate them when they were in the state capital. If you don't hit them 
back in their districts, you are out of luck. We realized that our approach 
was very limited, and we had to expand that. 
LRR: Have the principles around the coalition building changed? And 
have the players changed in terms of the kinds of groups that you work 
with? 
Johnson: Since the formal coalition ended, we continued working with 
the various groups in the coalition on an issue by issue basis. Issues like 
minimum wage and labor standards, employment discrimination, and 
farmworker issues were likely to pull us together across union-nonunion 
boundaries. There was a natural alliance between labor and the church 
community to work on farmworker issues. Child labor became a major 
issue that we aligned with the churches, with the Association of Pediatri-
cians, with educators, and others. It was a five-year battle to change the 
child labor laws on both the agricultural level and the non-agricultural 
level. 
LRR: And you were able to win that, right? 
Johnson: Yes, we won those. They were really hard-fought battles, and 
in my opinion, the only reason we won was because we were in coali-
tion. We now have, along with Maine, the most progressive set of child 
labor rules in the country. And clearly the most progressive agricultural 
child labor standards in the country. 
LRR: Let's talk for a second about this 1993 legislative period because 
it seems like it was pretty phenomenal and this was also done, you 
believe, because of the coalition? What happened here? 
Johnson: To make a long story short, there was a pretty big sea-change 
in our political scene in 1993—probably the biggest in about a decade 
and legislatively in about 25 years. In our House of Representatives, 
twenty-seven new Democrats were elected in the 1992 election and six 
of them were trade unionists. Out of those six trade unionists, we had 
recruited four of them. That changed our advantage in the House from 
58 seats to 40 (that was the split going into the election) to 65-33. Since 
i 
\ 
Labor and Political Action 17 
it takes 50 votes for a majority on any bill, having a 15-seat buffer was 
real big. In the Senate, there was an even more profound impact. Eleven 
new Senate Democrats were elected, and it actually changed the majority 
in the Senate. There had been a 25-24 Republican majority up to that 
point, and now there was a 28-21 Democratic majority which was a 
complete reversal with a substantial majority. We were also able to elect 
two progressive Democratics, Mike Lowry for governor and Patty Murray 
for U.S. Senate. 
LRR: So you were able to accomplish that based on the strategy of both 
the activist approach and the recruitment of candidates. And then the 
legislative agenda, how did this happen? 
Johnson: We had some dramatic legislative wins in 1993. We raised 
the minimum wage 65 cents an hour, to $4.90; increased wage replace-
ment benefits for injured workers by 20%; increased disability awards 
by 32%; raised unemployment benefits by $72 a week and set up an 
extended benefit program; created a $45 million training program for 
dislocated workers; and helped pass a universal access health care reform 
package. Pretty heady stuff! 
There were two issues we worked in coalition on during that legisla-
tive session. On one, the minimum wage, we got a victory. So that was 
enough to keep the coalition trust level high and not have the other groups 
feel like labor had abandoned the coalition because we did play a major 
role in helping to get that off. 
The other issue that we worked on with the churches in particular 
was trying to get a collective bargaining bill passed for farmworkers. We 
failed miserably, and we actually had major fights with Democrats in 
both the House and the Senate. It was pretty dicey times because we 
had a lot of other big bills that were hanging in the balance. 
LRR: I think that is interesting. Is there some way that you have found 
to sort of negotiate the coalition work around controversial issues like 
that? 
Johnson: The issue of collective bargaining for farmworkers was one 
where the trust between the churches and labor had been honed so well 
over the years. So much so that when a Democratic senator started try-
ing to basically "buy an advocate" for her bill, the church community 
stayed with us and it was extremely difficult for them to do that. That 
put them at great risk on some issues they were working on with the 
Senator, but they stayed with us, so I think that revealed to me the 
strength of the relationship that we build up over the years. 
\ 
18 Labor Research Review #22 
LRR: So, it sounds pretty rosy. You built a strong coalition in 88, you 
are moving on an agenda, in 1993 your legislative strategy has this 
giant payoff, you get these major victories, and now you have this 
abysmal 1994. What happened? 
Johnson: Well, 1994 happened. What I think we saw was occasionally 
at unique junctures in history you can pull off some things that are fairly 
dramatic, that what actually got us there was the beginning of real coali-
tion building, of real educating, of real activist approach. We had this 
big victory and we inadvertently stopped doing our careful organizing 
and coalition-building and went for the jugular, right? We figured, okay, 
we got it. Well, what we learned was, not good enough. 
The business associations had out-organized us. What they were able 
to do was to take all our 1993 victories and make the argument to the 
legislators and the governor about the cumulative impact that this had 
on the business community. And their arguments were not very sophis-
ticated. They didn't sort out differential impacts of these bills on dif-
ferent-sized businesses. They were going for the purely political 
analysis—"you are killing business, you are going to force business to move 
to Idaho, to Oregon, to anywhere else, because you are killing them." 
So we come into the 1994 session and we obligingly narrowed our list 
of priorities for the session. We went in with about six bills, as a state 
federation, that we wanted to see passed. What we came up against was 
legislators and legislative leadership saying there is a great need for leg-
islative balance here. Last year was labor's year, this year is business's 
year. And out of the six priorities we had, only one passed. Or two 
passed. One passed in its original form, removing the seasonal worker 
exemption in the state's health care reform. 
The second one that passed in a very diluted form was our major eco-
nomic development piece which would have required that businesses 
applying for state tax exemption deferrals or development loan fund grants 
would have to sign a binding contract with the state that would make 
them adhere to a set of socially acceptable principles, environmental 
laws, affirmative action laws, pay at least the state's average wage, pro-
vide health care, and give plant closure notification if they were shut-
ting down regardless of their size. Well that got whittled down to a 
study, and then the governor actually vetoed the study portion of it, and 
we ended up with an intent section of the law which basically says that 
economic development should strive to create family wage jobs in the 
state of Washington and pursue a course of sustainable economic devel-
opment. A bunch of crap. 
\ Labor and Political Action 19 
LRR: So was there a coalition approach to that? 
Johnson: Well, unfortunately no. In previous years we had the envi-
ronmental community and the church community working with us on 
the economic development issue. And actually to give them credit, it 
was more their issue and leadership than ours. They came to the hear-
ings and testified on behalf of this bill. It was their initiative and this 
year, for whatever reason, we didn't work in coalition on the economic 
development issue and we lost. It was a bad judgement call. 
But we learned that if we keep doing it on an issue by issue basis, then 
our results are going to be real sporadic, and people look at the coali-
tion as an issue by issue coalition so that they can then more easily 
whipsaw one group against another. 
I think the biggest lesson coming out of this for us is the need—the 
desperate need—for a permanent, long-term electoral and legislative 
coalition bringing together the various natural constituencies from these 
groups and recognizing that, in fact, we have common interests, com-
mon class interests, and common social interests. 
The second thing is we are going back to our labor activist approach. 
I think there are a lot of local unions that are ripe for this sort of thing, 
that have been waiting for something. I mean our state probably isn't 
all that different than a lot of others. There are certain activists that 
have been pushing for either the formation of a labor party or trying to 
get endorsements for Labor Party Advocates or for broader coalition 
party building. And all they need is a little bit of coordination, work, a 
little solidarity support to get them up and going. 
The idea would be to combine that with the permanent coalition 
building. That's the goal, so that if you are in a particular county it is 
the labor activist along with the representative from NOW and the 
environmental community that go in together and then we start get-
ting some momentum. We are going to win progressive issues together. 
We are going to lose progressive issues when we are separate and not 
organizing together. In the state of Washington, we have, I think, 35 
initiatives that have been drafted and people are out collecting signa-
tures on right now. And I think 34 of them are reactionary. The right 
has developed this organizing strategy and in many ways has been suc-
cessful in dividing and conquering our natural constituencies. They 
have kept us running around in circles, constantly on the defensive. 
Unless we can form a permanent coalition that takes up the offensive 
and defines short, medium and long-term vision, the wins that we have 
been able to make over the last few years will quickly become losses. 
To me, the only answer is, "keep organizing!" • 


Building the Road As We Travel: New Political Coalitions and the Washington State Labor Council

[Excerpt] New political action often involves testing ideas and approaches that do not always come together immediately or as envisioned. The political agenda of the Washington State Labor Council was formulated as one of three fronts in a comprehensive strategy to help the labor movement gain momentum over the next decade. This agenda was shaped during a tumultuous period of highs and lows in the political climate of Washington. Before 1988, the labor movement participated in politics through a traditional COPE mechanism. They turned to a more activist approach and had stunning victories by 1993, only to face a more sobering situation with business victories in 1994. LRR asked Lynn Feekin, an associate editor with the Review, to explore the recent political action experiences of the council with its Research Director, Jeff Johnson.Issue_22___Article_2.pdf: 145 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

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