AFL-CIO Leaders Describe Plan to Win Voters

Promising to mobilize at least 100 grass-roots political activists in every congressional district across the country this year, AFL-CIO leaders unveiled details Wednesday of an unprecedented $35-million campaign to spur voters’ support for issues dear to organized labor.

AFL-CIO officials said the program will dwarf previous get-out-the-vote efforts that in past years cost in the range of $5 million to $7 million.

Most of the program--about $24 million--is to be paid through a special assessment imposed directly or indirectly on all of the more than 13 million American workers belonging to AFL-CIO member unions. The assessment, which would cost each worker 15 cents a month for a full year, is expected to be approved easily at a special union convention in Washington next month.

Although the “Reclaim America” campaign will not spend money on individual candidates or political parties, it will promote issues embraced by many traditional Democrats.

“Our legislative agenda is very full,” said John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO. He was elected in October on a pledge to step up grass-roots political efforts and union organizing.

“We’re going to continue to defend Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries from cost increases and loss of coverage, children of working families from loss of access to education, and workers from loss of their wage and workplace-standards protections,” Sweeney said during a news conference at the site of the AFL-CIO’s executive council meeting.

Along with training grass-roots activists, Reclaim America will coordinate get-out-the-vote and voter registration drives and a major advertising campaign.

The AFL-CIO is expected to tap reserve funds and contributions from some of its 79 member unions to handle costs not covered by the special assessment.

AFL-CIO officials noted that although the federation’s initiative won’t put money into individual candidates’ campaigns, local and state labor organizations will make such contributions for this year’s elections. In addition, the AFL-CIO is expected to endorse President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore for reelection at its special convention next month. The convention is tentatively scheduled for March 25.

Earlier, Sweeney ripped into Republican presidential hopeful Patrick J. Buchanan, whose campaign was lifted Tuesday by winning the New Hampshire Republican primary. In his campaign, Buchanan has raised issues such as wage stagnation and job insecurity, which are also key themes of labor leaders.

Rebutting the notion that Buchanan is friendly to the cause of unionists, Sweeney said: “Patrick Buchanan is a racist, he’s anti-Semitic, he bashed women right along with labor and immigrants, and he’s a believer in supply-side economics. We are none of those things.”

Buchanan’s positions on trade and immigration, Sweeney said, “aren’t our positions at all. Our opposition to NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement] wasn’t opposition to open markets; we were against the treaty because it lacked appropriate worker protections, environmental, human-rights and union-rights standards.”