Politics
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September 2, 2024
In an unique interview with The Nation, AFSCME President Lee Saunders explains organized labor’s enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket.
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Workers, speaks throughout the 2024 Democratic Nationwide Conference on the United Heart in Chicago on Monday, August 19, 2024.
(Invoice Clark / CQ-Roll Name, Inc by way of Getty Photos)
In his first solo look because the Democratic candidate for vice chairman of america, Tim Walz flew to Los Angeles to seem earlier than 4,000 members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers (AFSCME), some of the highly effective and engaged labor unions in america. Walz, for a few years a dues-paying member of one other public-sector labor group, the Nationwide Schooling Affiliation, 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 have interaction 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 Celebration—to win his personal elections, and to assist him make Minnesota what Walz describes as “among the best 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 fame as a uniquely savvy and influential political strategist and coverage advocate. A working-class mental who educated as a labor economist however has at all times maintained the keenness of a grassroots organizer, Saunders sees organized labor within the context of broader actions—he’s lengthy been lively with the Management Convention on Civil and Human Rights, a bunch he at the moment serves as treasurer—and progressive governance.
Recalling their historical past collectively, Walz stated of Saunders, “We’ve executed a number of door knocks, we’ve executed a number of telephone banks, we’ve executed a number of rallies, and we’ve labored collectively on a number of legal guidelines to enhance folks’s lives.” Hailing the union president as “the pal to each American employee”—those that have organized as union members and those that have but to prepare—Walz stated Saunders and AFSCME perceive the fundamental 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’ll be able to to enhance folks’s lives.”
Presidential campaigns don’t do many issues by chance. 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 favored 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 stated 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 choose up the place Biden left off.
“We all know her not solely from being the vice chairman, 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 associate with President Biden, when she served as vice chairman; and we’ve full religion and belief in what she’s going to do to maneuver this nation ahead. By the identical token, I’ve identified, very nicely, Tim Walz because the governor of Minnesota. We now have two very robust associates in that state. I am going to that state fairly often, and I at all times see him and speak to him. There isn’t any query in my thoughts that this can be a crew that may battle for working households. They’ll crisscross the nation to do what they should do to encourage folks, to coach of us, to mobilize of us 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, may be very enthusiastic about Harris and Walz.”
Present Concern
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 are 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 Workers Worldwide Union, the American Federation of Lecturers, the Nationwide Schooling 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 power within the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
The ticket remains 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 truth that unions are an important base of political—and sensible—help for the get together. That was definitely 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 laborious to take care of the connection, frequently 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 almost 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 best way, stated Saunders.
“She was a crew participant,” he stated of the Biden-Harris partnership. “She was his vice chairman and he or she was instrumental in serving to to maneuver lots of the essential laws—together with President Biden—that supported working households. You have a look at the aid 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 associate 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 individuals are enthusiastic about it. And, now, with Tim Walz, I believe 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 basic shift towards a extra respectful method to the public-sector staff that former President Donald Trump had so incessantly derided—and that Trump had did not adequately shield and help when the coronavirus pandemic hit america. 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 obtained us by means of Covid.”
“We had so many individuals that have been overworked. They have been petrified of being uncovered to the virus, catching the virus. They have been working with the shortage of correct tools,” recalled the union president. “In lots of instances, they risked their lives to proceed to offer public providers—as a result of they have been devoted. We’ve simply obtained to proceed to remind those who we couldn’t be the nation that we’re with a weak public service. We’ve obtained to have a powerful 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 muse of our democracy. I’ve at all times believed that,” he stated. “I come from a household that offered public providers in Cleveland. My dad was a bus driver and he was a proud union member. He would at all times inform me, ‘Lee, in case you have a chance to affix the union at your office, you be a part of that union and also you be lively.’ My mother was a neighborhood organizer. They understood that hyperlink, that function, that we’ve in making the muse robust.”
Saunders adopted his father’s recommendation and obtained lively in commerce unionism as a younger man. He started working with AFSCME within the Nineteen Seventies and spent many years in high positions with the union, together with tenures as govt 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 some extent when public workers 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 academics. 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 ultimately 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 rising variety of states, pro-labor Democrats have what’s known as “trifecta management,” which places them answerable for the governorship and each homes of the state legislature.
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“Take a look at the states the place we’ve a trifecta,” stated Saunders. “Minnesota involves thoughts. The place we’ve a pro-worker governor and a pro-worker legislature, we’ve been capable of 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’ve the incorrect of us which are in workplace,” defined Saunders. “That’s why it’s so essential that we deal with native elections with the identical significance that we deal with nationwide elections—and possibly 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 may safe passage of labor regulation 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 keenness. 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,” stated Saunders. “Now, we’ve 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 may help civil rights and employee rights and financial rights.”
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