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Democrats should look for the union label

By ROBYN E. BLUMNER
Published February 6, 2005

Sen. John Kerry may think that having an Osama bin Laden videotape air on the weekend before the election lost him the presidency, but it was something else entirely. The Democratic Party's anemic showing can be summed up in two words: union members. Or, to be more precise, the lack of them.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of working Americans who belong to a labor union declined again last year. It stands at 12.5 percent, and if you remove public sector employees the percentage falls to 7.9. These numbers represent the lowest level of unionization in 60 years - far below the highs in the 1950s when 35 percent of the workforce was unionized.

Had just a small additional percentage of Americans been union members, Kerry would have been the one throwing the $40-million inaugural party.

Of course, not every member of a union is also supportive of Democratic candidates. The Teamsters broke ranks with the rest of labor in 1980 and endorsed Ronald Reagan for president. But union members are generally more educated on worker-related issues, and that strongly favors Democrats. If, in the last election, bread-and-butter issues such as jobs, the minimum wage, overtime pay, tax fairness, Social Security protection and health care were eclipsed by the war on terrorism, Iraq and "values" concerns such as gay marriage, then it was union members who uniquely kept their eye on the prize.

A postelection survey conducted for the AFL-CIO by Peter D. Hart Research Associates found that 65 percent of union members voted for Kerry, while only 33 percent supported Bush. But the analysis gets more intriguing as it is broken down. For example, gun owners nationally voted for Bush over Kerry by 20 percentage points. But if those gun owners were also union members, they voted for Kerry by a 12-point margin. White men were for Bush over Kerry by 18 percentage points, but white, male union members preferred Kerry by 21 points. And Americans who go to church weekly voted for Bush over Kerry by 21 percentage points. Add in the union factor and they were for Kerry by 12 points.

So there it is. Create a union member, and there's a good chance you've grown a Democrat as well.

This has not been lost on Republicans. According to Karen Ackerman, political director of the AFL-CIO, the Bush administration has been "extremely hostile to the rights of workers and their unions."

One of Bush's priorities has been to strip federal employees of workplace and organizing rights. Employees in U.S. attorneys' offices, federal airport screeners and employees at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency have had their rights to unionize unilaterally terminated in the name of national security. And at the Department of Homeland Security, newly completed rules will sharply curtail the rights of the 180,000 employees to bargain collectively.

In the meantime, the manufacturing sector, labor's lifeblood, has been decimated over the last 4 1/2 years with the loss of 3-million factory jobs.

A corollary to the decline in labor's fortunes has been the rise in obscene corporate executive compensation. In 2003, the pay gap between CEOs of large companies and average workers topped 300-to-1. In 1982, it was just 42-to-1.

Unions used to be the countervailing force, demanding that management share the wealth of a company with its workers. Today, with the threat of unionization remote and with employers such as Wal-Mart union-busting without apparent consequence, employers are free to compensate workers poorly while spreading the company's profits among its executives and Wall Street.

Even workers in corporate jobs are watching helplessly as their once-generous health insurance and defined-benefit pension plans are slashed or eliminated without their input. In 1980, 35 percent of American workers were enrolled in a pension. That number stands at 20 percent today.

It is time for the labor movement to reassert itself in a big way and with Democratic help. That includes promoting the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give employees trying to organize significant new legal protections from retaliation. It would also allow for the certification of a union based on the collection of employee authorization cards without the need for an election that may be delayed by an employer for months or years.

Workers who are unionized are far better educated on issues affecting their lives and how politics affects those issues. That's why they vote Democratic in great majorities. Kerry lost, primarily, because union membership keeps declining. This should be the organizing principle for Democrats going forward.

[Last modified February 6, 2005, 00:22:15]