Politics
/
September 2, 2024
In an unique interview with The Nation, AFSCME President Lee Saunders explains organized labor’s enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket.
In his first solo look because the Democratic candidate for vp of the US, Tim Walz flew to Los Angeles to seem earlier than 4,000 members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Staff (AFSCME), some of the highly effective and engaged labor unions in the US. Walz, for a few years a dues-paying member of two public-sector labor organizations, the Nationwide Training Affiliation and the American Federation of Academics, thanked the assembled delegates for “having a fellow union member” as their conference speaker and declared, with as a lot ardour as a Minnesotan can muster, that “AFSCME stands for all that’s proper.”
That wasn’t political small speak of the type that candidates interact in when they’re merely tapping the bases of constituent teams of their coalitions. That was a honest expression of gratitude from a former member of Congress and a governor who has relied on the help of AFSCME—a 1.4 million-member union with an extended historical past of figuring out and supporting rising stars within the Democratic Occasion—to win his personal elections, and to assist him make Minnesota what Walz describes as “top-of-the-line states for staff within the nation.”
Walz’s reference to AFSCME runs deep. Like Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, he has excessive regard for the union’s president, Lee Saunders, who for a few years has chaired the political committee of the AFL-CIO, served on the Democratic Nationwide Committee, and constructed a status as a uniquely savvy and influential political strategist and coverage advocate. A working-class mental who educated as a labor economist however has all the time maintained the passion of a grassroots organizer, Saunders sees organized labor within the context of broader actions—he’s lengthy been energetic with the Management Convention on Civil and Human Rights, a gaggle he at the moment serves as treasurer—and progressive governance.
Recalling their historical past collectively, Walz mentioned of Saunders, “We’ve accomplished just a few door knocks, we’ve accomplished just a few cellphone banks, we’ve accomplished just a few rallies, and we’ve labored collectively on just a few legal guidelines to enhance individuals’s lives.” Hailing the union president as “the pal to each American employee”—those that have organized as union members and people who have but to arrange—Walz mentioned Saunders and AFSCME perceive the essential premise of progressive commerce unionism: “you don’t win elections to financial institution political capital to win one other election; you are taking that political capital and also you burn it as quick as you possibly can to enhance individuals’s lives.”
Presidential campaigns don’t do many issues accidentally. The choice to have Walz begin his solo campaigning with AFSCME despatched a message that the Democratic ticket desires to take care of the tight relationship that the motion developed with Joe Biden, a labor favourite who preferred to claim that he was probably the most pro-union president in fashionable American historical past.
In an unique Labor Day interview with The Nation, Saunders mentioned that the Harris-Walz ticket had generated “a stage of pleasure that I haven’t seen for a very long time.” He additionally expressed his confidence that Harris and Walz would decide up the place Biden left off.
“We all know her not solely from being the vp, however we all know her from when she was legal professional common in California—and the work she did with childcare and residential care and the care financial system,” Saunders recalled. “She was a accomplice with President Biden, when she served as vp; and we now have full religion and belief in what she’s going to do to maneuver this nation ahead. By the identical token, I’ve recognized, very properly, Tim Walz because the governor of Minnesota. We’ve two very sturdy associates in that state. I am going to that state fairly often, and I all the time see him and speak to him. There isn’t a query in my thoughts that it is a crew that can battle for working households. They may crisscross the nation to do what they should do to inspire individuals, to teach people, to mobilize people across the significance of this election. We’re very enthusiastic about it. Our members are very enthusiastic about it. The labor union motion, the commerce union motion, could be very enthusiastic about Harris and Walz.”
Present Difficulty
That pleasure is evidenced within the backing the Democratic ticket has secured from the AFL-CIO and a lot of the high-profile unions which might be related to the federation. Along with help from AFSCME—which has members organized throughout 3,400 native unions and 58 councils and associates in 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico—the Harris-Walz ticket has received endorsements from the Service Staff Worldwide Union, the American Federation of Academics, the Nationwide Training Affiliation, the Communications Staff of America, the United Steelworkers, the Laborers Worldwide Union of North America, the Worldwide Brotherhood of Electrical Staff, the Worldwide Union of Painters and Allied Trades, the Worldwide Union of Working Engineers, Nationwide Nurses United, and dozens of different worldwide unions, labor federations, and locals throughout the nation. Very important help has additionally come from the United Auto Staff union, which is an particularly influential pressure within the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
The ticket continues to be working to safe the backing of two key unions, the Worldwide Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Worldwide Affiliation of Hearth Fighters. Walz made his pitch to the firefighters on Wednesday at their conference in Boston, saying to the cheering crowd, “Sisters and brothers in labor, it’s time so that you can step as much as the plate.”
The Democratic outreach to labor is greater than a messaging train. It displays the fact that unions are an important base of political—and sensible—help for the social gathering. That was actually the case in 2020, when Biden defeated Trump by 7 million votes nationally and retook three historic union states—Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—that had been narrowly carried by Trump in 2016. Biden has labored onerous to take care of the connection, commonly assembly with and taking the counsel of labor leaders, appointing labor allies to key positions, and advancing a pro-worker agenda at the same time as he has confronted very practically uniform opposition from congressional Republicans and splits within the ranks of the Senate Democratic Caucus. And Harris has been on the president’s aspect each step of the way in which, mentioned Saunders.
“She was a crew participant,” he mentioned of the Biden-Harris partnership. “She was his vp and she or he was instrumental in serving to to maneuver loads of the vital laws—together with President Biden—that supported working households. You have a look at the reduction plan, the place she was the tie-breaking vote. You have a look at the infrastructure plan, the place she was the tie-breaking vote. She was actually a accomplice with President Biden, and we all know for a proven fact that she goes to proceed to help working households all throughout the nation. Union persons are enthusiastic about it. And, now, with Tim Walz, I feel it’s a dynamic duo.”
For Saunders and his union, Biden and Harris’s election in 2020 was not only a political win. It represented a elementary shift towards a extra respectful method to the public-sector staff that former President Donald Trump had so steadily derided—and that Trump had did not adequately shield and help when the coronavirus pandemic hit the US. Saunders described the frontline staff within the hospitals, public well being, and public security companies that have been the primary responders to the disaster as “the on a regular basis heroes who acquired us by Covid.”
“We had so many individuals that have been overworked. They have been frightened of being uncovered to the virus, catching the virus. They have been working with the shortage of correct gear,” recalled the union president. “In lots of circumstances, they risked their lives to proceed to supply public companies—as a result of they have been devoted. We’ve simply acquired to proceed to remind those that we couldn’t be the nation that we’re with a weak public service. We’ve acquired to have a robust public service on this nation.”
That’s a religion that Saunders has embraced since he was a toddler rising up in Cleveland. “Public service is the inspiration of our democracy. I’ve all the time believed that,” he mentioned. “I come from a household that supplied public companies in Cleveland. My dad was a bus driver and he was a proud union member. He would all the time inform me, ‘Lee, when you’ve got a chance to hitch the union at your office, you be a part of that union and also you be energetic.’ My mother was a group organizer. They understood that hyperlink, that function, that we now have in making the inspiration sturdy.”
Saunders adopted his father’s recommendation and acquired energetic in commerce unionism as a younger man. He started working with AFSCME within the Nineteen Seventies and spent a long time in high positions with the union, together with tenures as government assistant to the president, administrator of the 125,000-member District Council 37—New York Metropolis’s largest public worker union—and worldwide secretary-treasurer.
Saunders was elected AFSCME’s president in 2012, at a degree when public staff and their unions have been below fierce assault. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker led the assault, however different Republican governors—together with John Kasich in Ohio and Rick Snyder in Michigan—promoted legal guidelines that have been particularly designed to undermine collective bargaining protections for state, county, and municipal staff, in addition to lecturers. In Wisconsin and Michigan, anti-union “right-to-work” legal guidelines have been enacted, concentrating on each private- and public-sector labor organizations.
Walker was finally defeated in 2018 by AFSCME-backed Democrat Tony Evers, whereas Snyder was changed the identical 12 months in Michigan by one other AFSCME-backed Democrat, Gretchen Whitmer. Now, in an growing variety of states, pro-labor Democrats have what’s known as “trifecta management,” which places them in command of the governorship and each homes of the state legislature.
In style
“swipe left beneath to view extra authors”Swipe →
“Have a look at the states the place we now have a trifecta,” mentioned Saunders. “Minnesota involves thoughts. The place we now have a pro-worker governor and a pro-worker legislature, we’ve been in a position to do some nice issues for staff, nice issues. And have a look at Michigan, the place Gretchen Whitmer and the Democrats overturned a ‘right-to-work’ and established all these new protections for staff.”
Different states current harder challenges. “That’s the place they may proceed to come back at us, if we now have the fallacious people which might be in workplace,” defined Saunders. “That’s why it’s so vital that we deal with native elections with the identical significance that we deal with nationwide elections—and perhaps even lead with these elections to attach our members in order that they perceive the significance of all of the elections.”
One of many labor motion’s deepest political thinkers, Saunders has lengthy advocated for methods that constructed from the grassroots towards statewide and nationwide energy. This Labor Day, as he seems towards the autumn presidential race and the battle for management of the US Senate, the union chief sees a chance not simply to defeat Trump and the anti-labor agenda of Republicans who’ve embraced the corporate-sponsored Undertaking 2025 initiative however, simply as considerably, to place in place an explicitly pro-union administration and a Congress that can safe passage of labor legislation reforms such because the Defending the Proper to Manage Act.
“That is an thrilling time. You possibly can really feel the vitality. You possibly can really feel the passion. This energizes all of the races. It energizes not solely the presidential race, it energizes the Senate, it energizes the Home, it energizes state legislatures the place we’re having elections throughout the nation,” mentioned Saunders. “Now, we now have a job to do: That’s speaking: speaking with our members, speaking with our communities throughout the nation, and ensuring that they perceive that there’s a true distinction between a ticket [led by Donald Trump and JD Vance] that desires to bury staff and never help working households versus a ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, who need to help working households who need to [finish the work of the Biden administration with a renewed push to] enact laws that can help civil rights and employee rights and financial rights.”
Can we rely on you?
Within the coming election, the destiny of our democracy and elementary civil rights are on the poll. The conservative architects of Undertaking 2025 are scheming to institutionalize Donald Trump’s authoritarian imaginative and prescient throughout all ranges of presidency if he ought to win.
We’ve already seen occasions that fill us with each dread and cautious optimism—all through all of it, The Nation has been a bulwark towards misinformation and an advocate for daring, principled views. Our devoted writers have sat down with Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders for interviews, unpacked the shallow right-wing populist appeals of J.D. Vance, and debated the pathway for a Democratic victory in November.
Tales like these and the one you simply learn are important at this crucial juncture in our nation’s historical past. Now greater than ever, we want clear-eyed and deeply reported impartial journalism to make sense of the headlines and kind reality from fiction. Donate right now and be a part of our 160-year legacy of talking fact to energy and uplifting the voices of grassroots advocates.
All through 2024 and what’s doubtless the defining election of our lifetimes, we want your help to proceed publishing the insightful journalism you depend on.
Thanks,
The Editors of The Nation
Extra from The Nation
Harris and Walz held their very own throughout an interview pushed extra by media-made controversies than substance.
Joan Walsh
However the hope I felt when she turned the nominee has been curdling into despair over her refusal to permit a Palestinian to handle the conference—and her persevering with silence on Gaza…
Benjamin Moser
The GOP’s new league of fringe figures tries to duplicate the social gathering’s profitable formulation of 2016. And it simply would possibly work once more.
Jeet Heer