[Excerpt] I am excited that the new leadership of the AFL-CIO is committing an additional $35 million to building labor\u27s political operation during this election year. But I\u27m especially excited that they will be doing more than returning Clinton to the Presidency and Democratic control to the House and Senate—They are going to move labor\u27s own agenda through ongoing political organizing, and not just in federal elections but in state and local ones

Colburn, Bruce

English

DigitalCommons@ILR

Labor Research Review 
Volume 1 | Number 24 
Tough Questions, Fresh Ideas, and New Models: 
Fuel for the New Labor Movement 
Article 6 
1996 
Building Independent Political Power 
Bruce Colburn 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@ILR. It has been accepted for inclusion 
in Labor Research Review by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@ILR. For more information, please 
contact catherwood-dig@cornell.edu. 
© 1996 by Labor Research Review 
Building Independent Political Power 
Abstract 
[Excerpt] I am excited that the new leadership of the AFL-CIO is committing an additional $35 million to 
building labor's political operation during this election year. But I'm especially excited that they will be 
doing more than returning Clinton to the Presidency and Democratic control to the House and 
Senate—They are going to move labor's own agenda through ongoing political organizing, and not just in 
federal elections but in state and local ones. 
Keywords 
AFL-CIO, elections, political power, politics 
This article is available in Labor Research Review: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/lrr/vol1/iss24/6 
\ 
Central Labor Councils 
BUILDING INDEPENDENT POLITICAL POWER 
Bruce Colburn 
I am excited that the new leadership of the AFL-CIO is committing an 
additional $35 million to building labor's political operation during this 
election year. But I'm especially excited that they will be doing more 
than returning Clinton to the Presidency and Democratic control to the 
House and Senate—They are going to move labor's own agenda through 
ongoing political organizing, and not just in federal elections but in 
state and local ones. 
Labor's leadership has promised to judge our success in November 
by whether we have substantially more capacity than we do now, and 
whether we have built that capacity in a way that excites our member-
ship, does not compromise our values, concretely improves the lives of 
workers and their families, and that is openly pro-union. These perfor-
mance measures are exactly what we need to keep labor's agenda on track. 
For a long time, building labor's own political capacity was not part 
of our work at all. Instead, we wrote checks to politicians, and set up 
phone-banks and knocked on doors. We had COPE meetings and 
made endorsements... after the field of candidates was already selected; 
we tried to mobilize members to vote for "our" candidates at election 
time. . . without asking our members' opinion of them, or doing much 
political education. Finally, we even got people elected. . . only to see 
many of them "go south" on us. We didn't have a real political orga-
nization that could identify, train, run, and elect our own candidates, 
and hold them accountable once in office. Indeed, it's been a very long 
time since labor even had the ambitions of building such an organization. 
Now, maybe, things are going to begin to turn around and as they 
do, the recent experience of central labor councils (CLCs) can provide 
some direction. Responding both to the need for a more effective polit-
ical operation and to the latest devolution of federal power to states and 
localities, some CLCs have begun building labor's independent polit-
ical power at the local level. In my home state of Wisconsin, unions and 
• Bruce Colburn is secretary-treasurer of the Milwaukee County Labor Council AFL-CIO, 
co-chair of the Campaign for a Sustainable Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Jobs Ini-
tiative, president of Wisconsin Citizen Action, and one of the founders of Progressive 
Milwaukee. 
\ 
50 Labor Research Review #24 
their allied organizations (Wisconsin Citizen Action and Wisconsin 
Council of Senior Citizens) have come to appreciate our considerable 
political potential given our combined membership of over 550,000. 
Member households contain 36 percent of the state electorate for this 
Presidential election; they represent 60 percent or more of the elec-
torate in off-year races. That's real potential power. 
In building the capacity to move our base, we've begun in the major 
population centers—Milwaukee and Madison. These centers are also 
the areas of greatest union density and strongest CLC organization. 
CLCs make sense as the coordinating vehicle for building our political 
machine for three key reasons: 1) they are the place where the COPE 
endorsements get made; 2) they are the best place to begin to get real 
coordination among unions; and 3) they have the stability and focus 
needed to develop and stay on a long-range course. Building real polit-
ical power, we know, is going to take five, ten, maybe fifteen years. Like 
the Right, which has shown us all how to organize politically, we're in 
this for the long haul. 
In Milwaukee and Madison, CLC members have taken leadership in 
developing two sorts of political formations: Labor Electoral Coalitions 
and New Party affiliates. 
The Labor Electoral Coalitions include both AFL-CIO unions and 
non-AFL-CIO unions such as the Wisconsin Education Association 
Council (the Wisconsin NEA affiliate); and they also include such 
labor-friendly citizen advocacy groups as the Wisconsin Council of 
Senior Citizens and Citizen Action. These coalitions have already 
boosted turnout in key local races. In Milwaukee, during the last school 
board election cycle, we were able to drive up our base turnout by 10 
percent and win four out of five targeted school board races in April 1995. 
Candidates from Progressive Milwaukee, the New Party affiliate, were 
elected in two of those races. 
The New Party, called the New Progressive Party (NPP) in Wiscon-
sin, has four affiliates in the state. The different NPP affiliates have 
elected some 40 candidates over the last three years, running their own 
candidates in local non-partisan elections, and supporting member 
Democrats in partisan ones. And there have been real payoffs to hav-
ing our own people in these positions. In Milwaukee, the school board 
passed a minimum "living wage" of $7.70 for their workers and work-
ers in private firms contracting with the school board. Before our action, 
those same workers had been making less than $6 an hour. In Madison, 
the Progressive Dane affiliate recently displaced the anti-union devel-
oper block from the county board. While the New Party does not yet 
control the board, they hold the balance of power. In coalition with tra-
Fuel for the New Labor Movement 51 
ditional Democrats, they have been able to enact much tougher land-
use policies, and are moving on to a living wage campaign. 
While many labor council members and leaders are active in the New 
Progressive Party, there are others who don't agree with the NPP's 
approach. The central labor council plays the unique role of helping to 
find common ground and coordinating labor and community activities 
that engender mutual support. These activities include specific candi-
date endorsements, grassroots organizing, and educational programs. 
Building labor's political power takes time and hard work and there 
is no "formula." But there are some basic lessons we have learned from 
the work we have done so far: 
Get Your Lists in Shape. We've spent a lot of time trying to develop 
a comprehensive data base on our members, including information on 
voting and volunteer history. We have also invested heavily in phone 
bank capacity, partly by urging that every newly built or occupied union 
hall have phone bank capacity built in. 
Develop A Program. Until we embarked on this project, we really 
didn't have a clear, simple, 5-10 point program on our issues. Of course 
we had legislative priorities—but the only people who really knew them 
were full-time lobbyists and other union officials. Now we have a Cam-
paign for Working Families that is being widely communicated to our 
members, and used as a benchmark for candidate performance. 
52 Labor Research Review #24 
Build a Network of Election Volunteers. Labor is only as strong as 
the members it can move, and the number we could move reliably a 
few years ago was pathetic. But through patient one-on-one organiz-
ing, and clearer specification of just what will be asked for when, we've 
begun to remedy this. In Milwaukee, our volunteer data base now has 
400 proven workers in it. Some people say that you can never recruit 
enough volunteers to do all the work of an election campaign—and of 
course they're right. You also need TV, automated phone banks, adver-
tising, mail, and all of the rest of the capital-intensive campaign machin-
ery. But volunteers are still crucial, and one-on-one organizing of members 
by members remains the most effective way to deliver votes. 
Organize Precinct-By-Precinct. An independent political machine 
must go beyond a strong base of election volunteers. It needs perma-
nent organization, ongoing membership, and leadership to work dur-
ing and after elections. In the last two elections, the Milwaukee CLC 
organized door-to-door visits to each one of its members in support of 
its endorsed and targeted candidates. And the New Party affiliates in 
Wisconsin now have in excess of 1,000 dues-paying members, orga-
nized into chapters that are usually county-wide, with concentration in 
the cities within those counties. And with those chapters we've begun 
to organize Precinct Leader Action Networks in key districts around 
the state. This gives us real canvass and Get-Out-the-Vote capacity. 
Recruit and Train Candidates. The best candidate is someone out 
of your own organization. He or she is more likely to be accountable, 
share your values deeply, and have some sense of what being "pro-
union" really means. Our past efforts to "grow our own" have been 
weaker than we would have liked. But we have recently tried to encour-
age good people to run for office by providing more advanced notice 
on races we're trying to enter, offering program materials and organi-
zational supports for those insecure about running for office, improv-
ing our training of would-be candidates before the elections, and 
improving our support once they're in office. Again, it's going to be a 
long haul, but we are making some progress, and will make more. Fail-
ure is simply not an option. 
I believe that if they put their heads and hearts together, most CLCs 
in most major cities could do what we've done—probably better! And 
I know that for labor to build independent political power—as the 
national AFL-CIO leadership is now committed to doing—patient elec-
toral organizing at the local level and capacity-building for the long 
haul is the way to get there. • 


Building Independent Political Power

[Excerpt] I am excited that the new leadership of the AFL-CIO is committing an additional $35 million to building labor's political operation during this election year. But I'm especially excited that they will be doing more than returning Clinton to the Presidency and Democratic control to the House and Senate—They are going to move labor's own agenda through ongoing political organizing, and not just in federal elections but in state and local ones.Issue_24____Article_12.pdf: 260 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

eCommons (Cornell Univ.)

https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1269&amp;context=lrr

Building Independent Political Power

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

DigitalCommons@ILR

eCommons (Cornell Univ.)