Labor chief Richard Trumka: “We won’t be taken for granted”

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/12/labor_chief_richard_trumka_we_wont_be_taken_for_granted/

The AFL-CIO president talks Obama's win, the struggles ahead, and the movement's evolving political role

By Josh Eidelson (Contributing writer, Salon and In These Times) runs in Omaha Steve's circle




AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka (Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

Unions had a good night last Tuesday. “I think we were the margin in states like Ohio, Wisconsin and Nevada, and probably three or four other ones,” AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka told Salon in a Wednesday interview. In Ohio, said Trumka, AFL-CIO members are 83 percent white. 40 percent are evangelicals, and 53 percent own guns. “And they voted 70 percent for Barack Obama.”

Building on last year’s successful referendum campaign to overturn collective bargaining attacks in Ohio, the AFL-CIO racked up 80,000 volunteer shifts and 2 million voter contacts in the state. An all-out labor effort also helped deliver victory for labor stalwarts like Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin. While unions’ effort to write collective bargaining rights into Michigan’s constitution fell flat, they beat back well-funded anti-union measures in Michigan and California that their enemies would love to take national.

So what happens now? As Salon has reported, the AFL-CIO announced earlier this year that it was rebooting its approach to politics. Trumka says Tuesday’s results vindicate the first step: investing more cash in an independent infrastructure focused on door-to-door political organizing for pro-labor politicians, rather than in Democratic Party campaigns and committees. Now comes the hard part: making good on labor’s promise to hold those politicians accountable. “One thing that we’re doing different than we’ve ever done before,” said Trumka, “is we’re not dismantling our program today.” Instead, he promised, it will move “from electoral politics to advocacy, and from advocacy to accountability.”

As Tuesday’s results rolled in, labor leaders were quick to claim a mandate for progressive governance, including greater stimulus, taxes on the rich rather than “entitlement” cuts, and immigration reform. On the latter, said Trumka, Republicans “either get on board or they are on the path to oblivion.”

FULL story at link.