DENVER—From the very start, unions loved Hillary Rodham Clinton. It took a while, but after a long courtship organized labor’s leaders are now fully behind Barack Obama in hopes a new Democratic administration can reverse their decade-long decline in membership.
Whether they can bring their mostly blue collar, white members along with them may decide the fate of the Obama candidacy.
Organized labor has declined in recent decades—to 12.1 percent of the working population last year from 20 percent in 1983—but it still holds clout in the Democratic Party. A full fourth of the Democratic National Convention delegates are union members, and organized labor is expected to pump more than $200 million into Democratic coffers by Election Day.
Union voters also are reliable Democratic supporters; the AFL-CIO expects one in every four voters going to the polls on Nov. 4 to be from a union household.
“Workers are going to be enthusiastically supporting Barack Obama for president,” ALF-CIO President John Sweeney said.
But the demographic that unions attract is the one Obama seems to be having problems with: white, blue collar Democrats.
In 2007, there were 12.7 million white union members, compared with 2.1 million black, 1.8 million Hispanic and 654,000 Asian, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the average union employee makes $44,876 a year, compared to $34,476 for nonunion employees.
Race is a factor, union officials said. Obama is the first African American to become a major party candidate for president.
“There are people who are not going to vote for him because he’s black,” said James Hoffa, president of the Teamsters. “And we’ve got to hope that we can educate people to put aside their racism and to put their own interests No. 1. ”
Unfamiliarity is another. Obama is a relative newcomer to the national scene, and many union members aren’t yet familiar with his pro-labor policies.
Obama, who Republicans have labeled as “elitist,” needs to find a way to relate with blue collar workers, with whom he has more in common than Republican presidential candidate John McCain, Change to Win Chair Anna Burger said. “What the Barack Obama campaign needs to do is tell his story,” she said.
This is the first presidential election since the organized labor movement split into two factions: the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, whose seven unions defected from the AFL-CIO in 2005. Both organizations pledge to work together to get Obama elected.
Still, there are Clinton holdouts. At least 12 AFL-CIO unions and one Change to Win union endorsed her and worked feverishly to get her the nomination. Obama had no major union endorsements until February, while Clinton’s began pouring in last summer.
At least one of those unions—the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers—has yet to switch its allegiance. Its president, Tom Buffenbarger, voted “present” when the AFL-CIO voted to endorse the Illinois senator in June, and said his union will endorse Obama at their national convention after Clinton releases her delegates.
Clinton had a detailed plan on how she was going to improve the lives of union members, while Obama “needs a lot more specificity,” Buffenbarger said.
