AFL-CIO Takes Up Immigration and Austerity, Even If It Means Fighting Some Dems - Working In These Times

AFL-CIO Takes Up Immigration and Austerity, Even If It Means Fighting Some Dems - Working In These Times

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Rather than lobbying and negotiation,  the AFL-CIO is pinning its hopes on the mobilization of immigrant workers and the cultivation of unexpected allies--such as members of mostly white, non-immigrant unions like the teachers or building trades. AFL-CIO organizers are making the case to the broader membership that comprehensive immigration reform is not simply an issue of curbing exploitation of immigrant workers and their families, but something that will benefit all workers and surrounding communities. If immigrants have a voice and cannot be so easily abused, they can prevent unscrupulous employers from driving down standards in a way that takes a toll on all workers, including failing to abide by laws on wages, hours and other working conditions. “We’re all in this together,” emphasized American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten.

To this end, the AFL-CIO is organizing rallies supporting comprehensive immigration reform in at least 14 cities and will help immigrant rights groups with anticipated big May Day marches.
Both Democratics and labor have a more-than-ideological stake in assuring citizenship—and thus voting rights—for immigrants. Undocumented immigrants are likely to vote Democratic if they become citizens. Having already proven their support for unions even when they are legally vulnerable, these undocumented workers—if freed from the fear of deportation if they speak out or organize—could also provide a surge of support for unions. Having once supported penalties on employers for hiring undocumented workers, the AFL-CIO long ago switched its outlook and now sees immigration reform—and the mobilization for it—as crucial for labor’s future.

“This is the time,” Durazo told reporters in Orlando. “This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. And we are putting enormous energy and resources into good immigration reform.”
The right to vote

Despite a checkered history on many issues of race, gender and immigration, both as a matter of social justice and practical politics, unions have long worked to expand voting and civil rights. Last fall, the AFL-CIO and its member unions put over 1,100 monitors in polling places in key swing states, many with a history of conservative efforts to suppress votes, especially blacks and other heavily Democratic constituencies. They fought new voter identification card requirements in the courts and in campaigns to educate voters.

But the specter of legislative attacks on voter rights continues to grow. Right-wingers on the Supreme Court reacted harshly this week to defenders of the Voting Rights Act, especially Section 5, which gives the federal government the power to review changes in voting laws in places, such as Alabama, that historically strongly curtailed black voting rights. These powers allowed the attorney general to block voter-ID laws in several states in 2012 that could have impeded almost a million people from voting, according to some estimates.
These new laws are “no different than a poll tax,” United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard said. The latest version are proposals, now under consideration in several states, that would divide up state electoral votes for president by Congressional district. Such a law, now being debated in Michigan, would have given Mitt Romney nine of the state’s 16 electoral votes last fall instead of the zero he received.  These “vote rigging schemes…are just wrong, and we’re not going to let people whose ideas are bankrupt steal elections,” Gerard said.

In addition to defending existing voting rights legislation and fighting new restrictions, labor is also mobilizing members to expand democratic rights so that instead of the approximately 70 percent of eligible voters usually registered, 90 percent or more of Americans would be registered for future elections. Unions, for example, will push for election-day registration or automatic, universal registration of everyone who is eligible.

The 2014 horizon
Labor has not entirely put aside electoral campaigning. The AFL-CIO is looking ahead to 2014, especially at unseating the right-wing and anti-union Republican governors who took office in the 2010 mid-term “shellacking” of Obama and the Democrats. Podhorzer says unions will launch major crusades against Republican governors in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and New Jersey. Depending on decisions by state labor federations, the AFL-CIO might also support primary challenges to some Democratic governors, such as Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn. Many of these governors, both Republican and Democratic, have angered unions by denying rights to public workers and by advancing so-called right-to-work laws (which allow workers to avoid paying their fair share of the cost for union work on their behalf, such as negotiating contracts or pursuing grievances).

“Our priority is going to be taking on these guys,” Podhorzer said. “I don’t know if the labor movement has ever made a sweep of governors like this as large a priority.”
Such voting campaigns complement labor’s fight against Senate filibuster rules and campaigns for workers’ rights to organize as part of a broad movement for democracy. This movement in turn can strengthen labor as a movement in its own right: beyond specific victories, such as labor law reform, a democratic movement will constrain the power of corporations generally. All of these efforts take on new importance for unions as attacks escalate against them. 
      
“Every meeting I have attended this week we talked about a new sense of urgency,” said Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME (the public service workers union) and head of the AFL-CIO’s political committee, “because we’re at a turning point where we’ve got to get back to basics of organizing and mobilizing--not only our members but also our communities.”
AFSCME and United Steelworkers are sponsors of In These Times.