Shuler: Democratic Party must 'center center its purpose and messaging around the economic and social needs of working people'

By BERRY CRAIG

AFT Local 1360

This old union guy has been saying for years that if most voters voted like most union members do, Democrats would win every time. 

Last month, "union members voted for Democratic endorsed candidates from the top of the ticket on down at a much higher rate than the general public,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler in a statement.

Shuler would quickly point out that unions don’t endorse Democrats just because they’re Democrats.

Nor do a majority of union members vote Democratic only because of the party label.

It's simple. Unions and union members support candidates who support unions. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency in the 1930s and 1940s, nearly all of those candidates have been Democrats.

“History will tell you that the Democrats ramrodded every meaningful piece of legislation for the benefit of working people,” said the late J.R. Gray, a former Democratic Kentucky state representative, Machinists union official and Kentucky labor secretary.

Gray was right. Workers got the basic right to unionize as part of FDR’s New Deal program of fighting the Great Depression. As a result, unions enjoyed historic growth. Organized labor thus became an important Democratic constituency-and still is.

"The labor movement gave overwhelming support to Vice President Kamala Harris and mounted an aggressive campaign to turn out their members for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot in 2024....,” wrote The Nation’s John Nichols. "Union members voted for Harris by a solid 57–39 margin, according to exit polls. That was comparable with the union vote for Joe Biden in 2020, a notable fact in an election year when support for Democrats declined among so many demographic groups."

In her statement, Shuler pointed out that "the labor movement represents roughly 20% of the voting members of the DNC." She also said the election of a new chairman and major officers "is an opportunity to change the course of the Democratic Party and to center its purpose and messaging around the economic and social needs of working people....As the DNC moves ahead with its selection process for its next leadership team, working people need to be at the table. Every Democrat running for leadership should be able to clearly articulate an answer to this fundamental question: If you were elected as chair, what would you do to elevate labor and working people’s voices and influence within the Democratic Party (please provide specifics)?"

Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Dustin Reinstedler said Shuler's message is "spot on. President Shuler gets it because she's one of us."

While most union members came through for the Democrats, we're "hearing so much about the Democrats losing the working-class vote," Nichlols wrote, explaining that's because "most working Americans aren’t union members. As a result, they don’t get information about Trump’s aggressively anti-worker policies from the education campaigns that unions have developed to inform their own members and to turn those members out as voters for pro-labor candidates."

He said the easiest way for Democrats to improve their standing among non-union workers is to "get a lot more Americans into unions."

Weaning people off conservative, anti-union outlets like Fox News also will help, said Kirk Gillenwaters, a UAW Local 862 retiree member president of the Kentucky Alliance for Retired Americans.

He said the right-wing media echo chamber disseminates propaganda, not news. Hence their working class audiences don't hear about what President Joe Biden and the Democrats have done for them.   

Gillenwaters cited the Inflation Reduction Act. "Look at all these good jobs people are benefiting from. But they won't know about that if they just watch Fox News. People base their opinions on where they get their news."

In her statement, Schuler said union delegates to the DNC will judge candidates for the leadership posts based on four principles. They "must have a strong connection to working people in unions," must restore the party's "connection to working people by focusing on the core economic issues they care most about...must commit to a robust, 365-day-a-year field program that engages workers in our communities," and must ensure that the party addresses "its failure to communicate successfully with working people" by investing "in innovative and creative methods of messaging instead of simply enriching the consulting class."

Reinstedler applauded Schuler's "courage to call out the party's shortcomings as well as offer a solution. Down here on the ground we've all been saying these things for years. It's no secret and it's no new epiphany. Either get your heads out of the sand or make way for those willing to fight because we're ready to stand up for the working class."