A Wasted Opportunity

1/17/2017

by Michael Hirsch, Saulo Colón, Murray Schneider, & Lois Weiner

Despite union officials’ post-election justifications, it’s clear Hillary Clinton did not deserve labor’s support.

Bernie Sanders was the obvious presidential choice for all of labor in November’s election. He was a candidate custom-made for the movement, and he handed himself to labor’s leaders ready to wear, running as a Democrat rather than an independent.

Unlike Hillary Clinton, a one-time member of the Walmart board of directors, Sanders has been a lifelong friend of labor with the record to prove it. It was Sanders who represented the left wing of the possible, not Clinton. Moreover, a Sanders presidency was certainly possible — especially at the early stage at which the American Federation of Teachers leadership made its peremptory and undemocratic endorsement of Clinton.

Labor officials such as AFT President Randi Weingarten — who defends her and her union’s endorsement in a recent article called “Why Hillary Clinton Deserved Labor’s Support,” coauthored with Leo Casey, executive director of the Albert Shanker Institute — as well as many others, in refusing to endorse Bernie Sanders while grossly exaggerating Hillary’s viability and worthiness for top office, share responsibility for the Trump victory.

While we agree with former Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen’s rebuttal that Sanders was labor’s natural candidate, Cohen’s analysis of the campaign misses an essential lesson for unions about backward social attitudes our society, workers, and union members harbor, and how unions must address these toxic prejudices.

First we need to clarify why Donald Trump won. In a recent article, Casey and Weingarten excuse a blundering Clinton campaign strategy and a candidate tarnished by her support for economic policies that harmed millions of working people, including union members.

Their argument points to Clinton’s expertise: her being an eminently qualified and experienced candidate for the presidency. They repeat the error of the Clinton campaign, ignoring considerable evidence that this “expertise” — read “insider position” — made her unpalatable to many voters.

Ironically, it is the workers who mistakenly voted for Trump who will be those most hurt by his administration. The union officials and political experts who were responsible for Clinton’s failed campaign will be relatively unscathed.

The Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank that is wholly favorable to Clinton’s economic policies (which we find, at best, limited), issued a report analyzing shifts in voter attitudes that completely undercuts Weingarten and Casey’s assertions that voters failed to hear Clinton’s real message:

The Comey letter reopened the vote decision for some people and critically impacted the race, but the Clinton campaign moved from running on change to running on continuity. She fully articulated an economic change message throughout the three debates and offered her plans for change, but after the Comey FBI letter, the campaign no longer spoke of change, the economy and her bold plans for the future. In the final weeks, the Clinton campaign conceded the economy and change to Trump, while seeking to make him personally unacceptable.

Frustratingly, it closed the campaign appealing for unity, promising to promote opportunity and to “build on the progress” of the Obama presidency. That is why key groups of voters moved to Trump in the Rust Belt and why the turnout of many base groups was so disappointing in the end.

Moreover, according to USA Today, AFT’s internal assessment shows 20 percent of AFT members voted for Trump. Close to one-third of NEA’s members did likewise.

Clinton’s being the first female candidate of a major American political party was indeed historic. It was not, however, a persuasive enough factor by itself for white women workers to vote for her. Neither a politician’s gender nor his or her race, as Barack Obama’s administration demonstrates, is a guarantor he or she will pursue an agenda consistent with organized labor’s professed ideals or workers’ economic interests.

The authors are of course correct in faulting the archaic Electoral College for invalidating the popular voting majority Clinton received. And voter suppression, as they say, is rampant in GOP-dominated states, where congressional and state district lines are gerrymandered to minimize urban and minority voting blocks. That was a given going into the election.

Weingarten and Casey are on sounder ground when they call for labor to push elected officials for “an economic program and [to] highlight class issues that convincingly take on what have been decades of economic losses to working people in the American heartland.” But that can’t happen without recognizing why the Clinton campaign didn’t or couldn’t do it, and why the bulk of the labor movement abetted what in retrospect was a betrayal of their members’ interests.

The irony, of course, is that Sanders ran just such a campaign. He said and did during his run — when Weingarten and Casey spurned him — what they now say Democrats must do.

Weingarten and Casey point to the key flaw in Cohen’s analysis: his denial of the salience of bigotry in Trump’s electoral success. They are correct to name “a significant backlash vote in which ‘others’ — most prominently, people of color, immigrants, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, and Jews — were scapegoated for the declining economic and social status of white male workers,” contributing mightily to the Trump victory.

While a majority of those earning $50,000 or less annually backed Clinton, voting members of union households were sharply divided. Although organized labor’s apparatus was mobilized for Clinton, 43 percent of members of union households voted for Trump. Julius Jacobson explained this phenomenon decades ago in The Negro and the American Labor Movement:

The racist attitudes of American workers are a social problem, with roots that are deep and complex. The unions are certainly not responsible for this state of affairs. The AFL-CIO does not preach discrimination. On the contrary, its formal educational material invariably advances the ideas of racial equality and nothing here is intended to detract from what the labor movement has contributed to civil rights legislation. The point is that the good that the union movement does is primarily on an elitist level, i.e., it is done from above. There has been no corresponding effort to bring the principles of racial equality home to the rank and file. For this reason, the union movement, bureaucratized and elitist, must assume its share of responsibility for the racial savagery and ignorance exhibited by so many rank-and-file workers.

So it’s no surprise that Trump built a campaign around hate; “divide and conquer” by fanning prejudice is an old employer tactic. And while it is no surprise either that the unions didn’t place opposition to Trump’s appeals to bigotry at the core of their campaign work, Cohen’s failure to name this problem is a critical flaw in his analysis. Labor’s unwillingness to endorse and work for Sanders, a presidential candidate for whom its members would vote, cannot be separated from the conservative, elitist culture in unions, which in turn weakens unions in addressing social attitudes that undercut solidarity, at the workplace and in the voting booth.

Labor historian Judith Stein argues that “context, geography, religion, gender, skill, ethnicity, and — yes — race all make solidarity contingent, not something that inexorably flows from economic conditions or the social relations of production.” At the same time, “egalitarian racial sentiment is often the consequence, not the cause, of unionization.” For unions to develop a winning political strategy they need to empower members to “own” decisions about political endorsements and policies, while simultaneously addressing intolerance that workers share with the rest of the society.

What of the claim that the far left in effect elected Trump by siphoning off votes from Clinton? Even if this were factually accurate, which it is not, the argument sidesteps the scant gains the Democrats sustained in the House and Senate, where the Greens did not run. Glenn Greenwald said it best: “When a political party is demolished, the principal responsibility belongs to one entity: the party that got crushed. It’s the job of the party and the candidate, and nobody else, to persuade the citizenry to support them.”

Weingarten and Casey quote Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald and Slate’s William Saletan to validate their doomsday theory that had Sanders won the nomination he would have inevitably been sandbagged by the GOP in the general election. They claim “a Sanders defeat on the order of the 1972 McGovern campaign” was more likely than a Sanders victory.

Their choice of historical analogy is revealing because it demonstrates that despite their rhetoric about Trump having ridden a tide of bigotry into office, they actually continue the AFT’s and organized labor’s failed political strategy of cutting off unions from social movements. McGovern forfeited the support of state Democratic Party organizations and the AFL-CIO because of his alignment with the movement against the war in Vietnam. Opposition to the war was McGovern’s singular issue. In contrast, Sanders raised the “bread-and-butter” concerns of working people.

In fact, Sanders would have been better at attacking GOP policies than was Clinton. He was a credible opponent of the rich and corporate plutocrats; she was not. And as we know from his primary campaign, his candidacy would have stirred widespread support for economic issues that Casey and Weingarten argue should be at the heart of labor’s politics.

Clinton lost the campaign because she had nothing new to offer, not because the Left or misguided idealists voted their fantasies over their interests. A loss for Sanders would have invigorated the Democratic Party, unions, and the progressive movement. Clinton’s loss has spawned demoralization. The effort to blame Clinton’s and the Democratic Party’s defeats on the Left denies political realities that need to be faced. It obfuscates failed political strategies that need to be changed.

Weingarten and Casey’s explanation for Clinton’s failure illustrates both calamitous mistakes of labor leaders C. Wright Mills’ identifies in The New Men of Power.  First, they

[look] to the government or to particular politicians rather than to the workers. The second is thinking of [their] movement essentially as a minority affair, which must balance its power against others, rather than as a potential majority movement with which to reorganize modern society.

The form of political action that Weingarten and Casey defend is a suffocating loser. It seeks accommodation when confrontation is required. It is more concerned with the longevity of the union as an institution — an important consideration for labor, but one that demands a more courageous vision —  than with the overall strength of its members vis a vis their employers, which in fact is the only guarantor of institutional survival.

While they incorporate rhetoric about social justice that appears to reject “business unionism,” their political strategy continues the self-defeating thinking and practices of the old ways. They confuse the personal relations union heads curry with politicians for the real power of the union — a mobilized, informed membership — and continue to tail the Democrats, endorsing their tepid, even damaging economic programs instead of challenging them. They ask for too little and settle for even less, and their members and many working people are no longer buying that scenario.

It’s time for friends of labor and working people to say our unions need to radically overhaul their strategies; it’s the beginning of wisdom and a necessity for survival.

Bernie Sanders' subway flub doesn't stop New York transit workers union from endorsing him

BY DAN RIVOLI NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

April 13, 2016

This is more than a token endorsement.

New York’s transit workers union Wednesday threw its support behind Sen. Bernie Sanders’ quest for the presidency.

Transport Workers Union Local 100, representing 42,000 workers in the New York region, endorsed the fiery Vermont senator ahead of the state’s Tuesday presidential primary.

Sanders visited the union hall in downtown Brooklyn to pick up the endorsement, taking the podium to chants of “Bernie! Bernie!”

He slammed the usual targets of his populist anger, including big corporations and the wealthy who put their money in tax havens.

He also called for growing trade unions around the country and spending $1 trillion on repairing crumbling infrastructure.

“We need the best mass transportation system in the world — it is essential to our economy,” he said. “Millions of people in this city depend on a high-quality mass transportation system to get them to work.”

The Democrat said his infrastructure spending plan could be paid for by keeping the wealthy from stashing their fortunes in tax havens.

We end that loophole, that’s $100 billion a year we put right into our infrastructure,” he said.

TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen said that Sanders’ message aligns with his members’ concerns.

“In Bernie Sanders, we see a kindred spirit,” Samuelsen said. “Bernie Sanders has been fighting against the powers that be in this country on behalf of American workers his entire life.

”The endorsement vote by the union’s executive board was nearly unanimous, Samuelsen said.

“He speaks our language,” said Louis Marrero, a bus driver and union official from Staten Island. “He speaks for labor.”

“We’re a progressive union,” he added.

Sanders revealed he still thought subway riders used tokens during an April 1 conversation with the Daily News Editorial Board.

But the gaffe was taken in stride by rank-and-file TWU members.

“He was born in Brooklyn,” said station agent Christine Williams, 49. “He’s been out of town for a while. I have no problem with that.”

Samuelsen, the union chief, said Sanders’ economic message was more important than “nitpicking” his transit knowledge.

“I think Bernie’s old school,” Samuelsen said when asked about the token comment.

Sanders’ rival for the Democratic nomination, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, had a subway snafu of her own while campaigning in the city recently.

She had to repeatedly swipe her MetroCard to enter a Bronx train station. 

Another Major Union Just Endorsed Bernie Sanders

Dave Jamieson

03/14/2016

The 190,000-member Amalgamated Transit Union hops aboard the Bernie bus.

A national transit workers union threw its weight behind presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday, endorsing the Vermont independent over Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

The Amalgamated Transit Union waited longer than most major unions before endorsing a candidate in the race for the White House. Union leadership said it had carried out a careful and deliberative process with union members before deciding to side with Sanders.

“The sincerity of Bernie Sanders and his long standing fidelity to the issues that are so important to working people are what convinced us that standing with Bernie is standing with the 99% of America that has been left out of the mainstream public debate, cheated out of our jobs and denied the true meaning of the American dream,” Larry Hanley, the union's president, said in a statement.

Since announcing their candidacies, Clinton and Sanders have had a long and protracted battle for the backing of organized labor. By any measure, Clinton is way out in front of the self-described democratic socialist. In October, she locked up endorsements from unions representing the majority of unionized workers in the U.S., including the largest public sector labor groups in the country.

But a handful of progressive unions have broken with the pack and declared their support for Sanders. That includes the Communications Workers of America, National Nurses United, the American Postal Workers Union, and now the ATU.

Most important for Sanders, those unions' backing has helped stave off a potential endorsement of Clinton by the AFL-CIO, the national labor federation they are all members of.

Many unions came out in favor of Clinton long before Sanders became a viable threat for the Democratic nomination. Before ATU made its endorsement, Hanley told The Huffington Post that union leadership had made a conscious decision to wait before backing any one of the candidates.

"We think campaigns matter," Hanley said. "We think that until people campaign, you don't get a good sense of how they'll govern. In fairness to all the candidates and our members, we thought it was important that we wait and watch and hear what the candidates have to say and how they come out on positions."

Though union membership has dwindled significantly, labor unions remain a pillar of the Democratic base. Democratic candidates perennially rely on unions to make phone calls, knock on doors and generally steer financial support to their campaigns. The Citizens United ruling that allows corporate America to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns also applies to unions, though organized labor's coffers aren't nearly as deep and rely primarily on member dues.

ATU represents 190,000 members working mostly in bus and rail jobs. As of December, the union's political action committee had raised $1 million for this election cycle, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. The union's contributions have gone overwhelmingly toward Democrats.

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The ATU is obvious listening to its member wishes who disdain Clintons’ NAFTA.

Unions who have unilateral leadership (fake unions - back room politics) all endorsements went for Clinton.

Unions whose membership make the decisions went for Bernie Sanders.

One wonders who will Transport Workers Union endorse.

Labor Unions Fight For Relevance, While Candidates Petition Directly To Workers

Philip Rosenstein

3/9/2016

“Blue-Collar Vote Key for Trump Win,” said the front page of The Wall Street Journal Monday morning. While this may be the case, labor unions are preparing to actively support the eventual Democratic nominee.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has amassed around two dozen national union endorsements, with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders securing five. Notably, however, the AFL-CIO, the country’s major union federation, is yet to endorse either candidate and is unlikely to do so any time soon.

Some have characterized the AFL-CIO’s decision not to endorse as a win for Sanders. The move highlights the growing rift between union rank-and-file, which connects with Sanders’ messages of inequality and international trade agreements (not to mention Trump’s populist inventions), and union leadership, which views Clinton as the best chance for a Democrat to remain in the White House.

Side-stepping an endorsement hasn’t stemmed the federation’s political pursuits. Following its winter meeting in San Diego, the campaigns department announced that it would create a super PAC geared toward energizing voter turnout.

Though expected to raise tens of million of dollars, the labor-run PAC will be a far cry from the hundreds of millions sitting on the sidelines for the GOP, most visibly embodied in the Koch brothers’ pledge to spend $889 million this cycle.

Beyond unions themselves, blue-collar workers are becoming a key demographic in the presidential race. Union membership has declined significantly over the past few decades and the usually left-leaning unions have steadily lost clout in the growing number of Right to Work states around the country.

This will particularly be the case in the Rust Belt, where Trump has the best chance to secure the nomination.

The deterioration of the powers unions had in their collective bargaining rights allows space for other organizations, i.e. political campaigns, to engage potential voters. Sanders and Trump have done just that, Sanders with his focus on inequality and animosity toward the corporate class -- Trump with xenophobia and catchy idioms.

Trump has done particularly well in the early primaries and caucuses with white working-class voters, while Sanders has done less well. He has made large inroads with the white blue-collar demographic. As both candidates attest, there is overlap in support between the two, and that most likely lies with the working class.  

Red, White & Blog spoke with WorkJam COO Joshua Ostrega, who noted that “the minimum wage isn’t the only part of the discussion that needs attention. There are a number of qualitative changes that can be made to improve the conditions and rights of workers.”

Trade, welfare, inequality and immigration will weigh heavily on American workers’ minds. Differences also exist between white and minority members of the working class. Despite Trump’s success with white blue-collar voters, unions and workers will be integral to Democratic success in November.

Former AFL-CIO political director, Steve Rosenthal explained: “For the Democratic nominee, the labor movement is the most effective tool after the candidate’s own campaign.”

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It is also true - the unions have lost clout and respect ‘due to union bosses excesses’ to right-to-work organizations.

Wage stagnation and trade agreements (shipping jobs overseas) are a concern to every union member. 

Whichever candidate who can articulate those concerns will get the support of blue collar.

Union Members Gravitating Toward Trump Amid Tough Talk On Trade And Immigration

BY COLE STANGLER @COLESTANGLER 

03/08/16

Brian Sepe has been a dues-paying member of the United Steelworkers for over three decades. Last week, he voted for Donald Trump in Massachusetts' Republican primary.

“My country is going to hell,” said Sepe, a 55-year-old utility worker and resident of Lowell, the famed mill town that is now one of the state’s poorest cities. “You look back at all the different trade agreements over the past 30 years, [and] it’s always been to move jobs out of the country. That’s got us in so much trouble. We don’t have good jobs left in this country.”

“[Trump] is a no bulls--- kind of guy,” Sepe continued. “He calls it what it is.”

Sepe belongs to a breed that’s causing serious concern among officials from organized labor and the Democratic Party: union members who support billionaire real estate mogul Trump for president.

As primaries and caucuses have illustrated thus far, voters across the country are drawn to the GOP front-runner’s populist rhetoric and tough talk on trade — both of which are pillars of many embattled U.S. labor unions. Come November, some Democrats and labor officials worry that Trump could capture a large chunk of the union vote, historically a vital part of the Democratic electoral coalition.

Mary Kay Henry, president of the 2 million-member Service Employees International Union, acknowledged as much in a recent interview. "I am deeply concerned about what is stirring, even in our membership ... where our members are responding to Trump's message," she told former Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod in a January interview.

The head of the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor federation, struck a similar chord in a speech earlier this month: "Donald Trump is tapping into the very real and very understandable anger of working people," Richard Trumka told a gathering of construction unionists. "When Trump says we’re losing, his message resonates with some folks. And when he yells or lashes out, he finds a sympathetic audience who wishes more politicians would express the frustration they feel."

Larry Cohen, a former president of the Communications Workers of America union who recently became a labor adviser to Democratic presidential

candidate Bernie Sanders' campaign, told International Business Times he has witnessed firsthand how Trump’s rhetoric resonates with some union members on the campaign trail. Without Sanders and his brand of left-wing populism in the race, rank-and-file support for Trump would be even greater, he said.

“I think you have to look not just at the Clintons but [also at] the migration of the Democratic establishment in and out of finance capital, their families, their contributions, the way they combine social liberalism with free market economics and some lip service to workers’ rights but deliver nothing,” Cohen said. “People have had it with that liberal establishment.”

To be sure, a minority of labor-union households regularly vote Republican: 39 percent of voters from union households opted for John McCain in 2008 and 40 percent preferred Mitt Romney to President Barack Obama in 2012, for example. Among these GOP-leaning union households, limited polling suggests Trump is the hands-down favorite.

Sepe is one of these voters. Though registered as an independent, Sepe said he typically supports Republican presidential candidates. He said he likes Trump’s promises to crack down on illegal immigration and roll back unfair trade deals. He is not bothered by Trump's opposition to hiking the minimum wage or his support for so-called right-to-work policies, laws that prohibit unions from deducting fees from workers they represent but who decide not to join.

“Unions do still serve a purpose,” he said. “As far as [supporting] Democrats, I think they have to take a stand back and look over the years at how the Democratic Party has changed. It’s not the way it was when unions first started up. My belief is the Democrats, yes, they’re for the people -- but the people of what country? The highest bidder?”

Sepe blames the Democrats for the North American Free Trade Agreement, the hotly contested deal with Canada and Mexico championed by President Bill Clinton. He also blasted the Obama administration’s support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a similarly controversial agreement between the U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim countries that would cover 40 percent of the world economy.

Michael Watson is another proud union member who backs Trump. Watson is a heavy highway contractor who sits on the advisory board of his Indiana district of Operating Engineers Local 150, a 22,000-member local that stretches from eastern Iowa to northern Indiana. The 46-year-old recalled voting for Republicans in recent presidential elections — and before then, supporting third-party bids from Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot.

He vehemently opposes his union’s decision to formally endorse Hillary Clinton —one of the roughly two-dozen nods from major unions that have gone her way, covering about 10 million members. Watson said the endorsement clashed heavily with the views of many members in his district, which counts a sizable contingent of Trump and Sanders supporters. “I think it’s bullcrap,” he said. “I don’t care for it.”

“I’m so tired of paying for freeloaders while they sit on their a-- while I have to work and take care of them, meaning illegal immigrants, people on welfare, able-bodied but won’t do anything to help themselves,” Watson said. “[Trump]’s not politically correct. I seem to have the same problem. I get tired of people’s feelings getting in the way of their thinking, and he speaks his mind.”

In addition to Republicans, limited anecdotal evidence suggests Trump may be picking up support from some Democratic-leaning union members: Jeff Hester, a former Democrat and currently laid-off member of the Teamster-affiliated Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers who lives in Tennessee, recently launched his page Teamsters for Trump. It now counts more than 600 "likes."

When the Communications Workers of America union polled its members over who to endorse in 2016, Trump came in third behind Democrats Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, winning more than was expected for a Republican candidate. The union eventually endorsed Sanders.

In January, the AFL-CIO affiliated Working America group polled likely voters with household incomes of $75,000 or less in working-class neighborhoods outside Cleveland and Pittsburgh. While most support for Trump came from Republican voters, one in four Democrats surveyed said Trump was their top choice. 

Despite the many grumblings and anxieties, however, there is less hard evidence —at least, at this stage of the campaign — that Trump is actually gaining traction from union members who do not typically vote Republican.

A January 2016 poll from Zogby Analytics found Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton leading Trump among union households by a 56-37 percent margin. In a Siena College Research Institute poll released Monday, union households in New York preferred the two Democratic hopefuls to Trump by wide margins, around 20 percent in both cases. Sixty-seven percent of New York union households held unfavorable opinions of Trump, the same poll found. Just 28 percent had favorable opinions.

Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, pointed to President Obama’s successful elections in 2008 and 2012. In both cases, concerns that union members would not back the campaigns failed to come to fruition, she said. Instead, union voters helped deliver Obama victories in crucial states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.

As Trump targets this crop of largely white voters, Bronfenbrenner said unions will have to put in the time and resources to counteract his appeal among rank-and-file members — just as they did against McCain and Romney.

“The labor movement was successful in getting these same voters to vote for Obama,” said Bronfenbrenner. “They’re going to have to get out there and do that kind of education again ... What happens depends on unions doing the work to educate members.”

The face of organized labor is changing too. Despite lingering popular perceptions, most U.S. union members today are not white men. Nearly half of all union members are in the public sector — which, on the whole, has a higher share of female and black workers than their counterparts in the private sector. And as research from Bronfenbrenner has shown, most new union members today are women and people of color. Voters from such backgrounds are unlikely to support Trump, she said.

“He’s targeted his campaign toward appealing to the fears of white men, but he is alienating a great deal of women and he’s totally alienating people of color,” Bronfenbrenner said. “And if that works in this country, if that works, then it is very frightening.”

Bernie Sanders weighs in on the matter of T-Mobile and unions

Alex Wagner 

February 24, 2016

T-Mobile has been the target of criticism from several labor groups lately, and this week the subject of unions is in the news.

In a statement to InsideSources, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders haas touched on the recent labor and union news surrounding T-Mobile. “T-Mobile’s repeated labor law violations and anti-union activities are particularly troubling given the long history of its parent company in Germany of respecting worker rights,” the presidential candidate said. “In my view, we have got to make it easier, not harder, for workers at T-Mobile to form a union and collectively bargain for better wages and benefits.”

The report continues with quotes from parent company Deutsche Telekom regarding T-Mo US’s labor practices. DT told InsideSources that it “takes its responsibility with regard to the working conditions of our employees very seriously” and that, after examining the working conditions at T-Mobile US, it found that “there are no indications to suggest that TMUS (T-Mobile US) managers would prohibit union activities.”

T-Mobile itself says that it abolished its rules blocking employees from talking about wages and internal investigations after last year’s NLRB ruling.

The rest of the report goes on to detail the recent criticisms that T-Mobile has faced, like accusations of deceptive advertising that say that its “no contract” claims are misleading because T-Mo sells handsets with equipment installment plans that require a customer pay the remaining balance of a phone if they end service before their device is paid off. Also mentioned are reports of similar to past claims of “intense pressure” being put on customer care reps.

Autoworker union endorsement could come too late to influence Michigan primary

By Emily Lawler

2/17/2016

LANSING, MI -- Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders visited United Auto Workers Local 600 in Dearborn this week, but it's fully possible the union won't endorse a candidate until well after Michigan's March 8 primary.

"We have made no endorsements. Our regions are going through their internal processes which are ongoing," said UAW international spokesperson Brian Rothenberg.

In 2008, the UAW international executive board endorsed now-President Barack Obama in June, well after Michigan's January primary. President Barack Obama ran unopposed in Michigan's 2012 Democratic primary.

Where it does come into play ,the UAW endorsement can be powerful, said UAW Local 6000 legislative liaison Ray Holman.

"I think that the UAW is one of the most important and significant unions in the world and its home is right here in Michigan. So of course any endorsement from the UAW carries a lot of weight," Holman said.

Typically unions decide who they're supporting for president on the national or international level, and their state and local members mobilize for that person.

And the union boost can be significant. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Michigan had 585,000 union members in 2014. The Michigan AFL-CIO, a federation of union groups, boasts 1 million active and retired union members across the state.

That amounts to about 13 percent of the state's voting age population, which according to the census bureau totaled 7.69 million in 2014.

In 2008, the AFL-CIO endorsed Barack Obama in June, well after Michigan's primary. In 2012 the AFL-CIO endorsed him on March 13, also well after Michigan's Feb. 28 primary.

But some major unions have already handed down endorsements. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees endorsed Hillary Clinton in October.

AFSCME members "want the candidate who will be the most effective champion for working families, and who will be able to deliver a victory in this critically important election. AFSCME members believe that candidate is Hillary Clinton," said AFSCME President Lee Saunders in a statement.

AFSCME has between 60,000 and 65,000 members in the state, said Michigan AFSCME Council 25 legislative liaison Nick Ciaramitaro.

Clinton has also garnered endorsements from unions with big Michigan presences including the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and the SEIU, according to information provided by her campaign. The Sanders campaign, meanwhile, has gathered endorsements from National Nurses United, Communications Workers of America and American Postal Workers Union.

Clinton Can't Count on Union Backing in Iowa, Despite Endorsements

Rank-and-file support for Bernie Sanders appears to be growing.

—By Patrick Caldwell

Sun Jan. 31, 2016 4:39 PM EST

When Bill Clinton swings by the Machinists Union hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Sunday night, he'll be flanked by a bevy of national labor leaders. It will be a fitting scene for the final night before the first votes of the Democratic presidential nomination contest, a campaign in which Hillary Clinton has wrapped up the vast majority of national union endorsements. She's received the support of 24 unions, she bragged at an event last week, representing more than 10 million of the 14.6 million unionized workers in the country.

Organized labor has been a major push for her campaign as she closes out Iowa. Last week, Hillary Clinton hosted a "Hard Hats for Hillary" event that included the presidents of the Carpenters, Ironworkers, and Federation of Government Employees, among others. She released a gauzy video on her support for unions, in which she tells their members, "A lot of the work you do may not be as well understood and appreciated as it should be."

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On the ground here in Iowa, however, Clinton's labor advantage isn't quite so clear cut. There aren't polls measuring statewide union support for the two candidates, and it's notoriously difficult to forecast caucus results anyway, given how much they come down to turnout and organization. But mounting anecdotal evidence from Iowa suggests that notwithstanding the endorsements of the people atop the unions, Clinton might not be able to count on the same level of support from actual union members in Monday's caucuses.

"I know there's a lot of rank-and-file people that like Bernie Sanders," says Ken Sager, president of the Iowa AFL-CIO. Sager, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which has yet to endorse, says he's been getting about equal volumes of pro-Sanders and pro-Clinton mail—about seven piece of mail per day from the campaigns and various unions in the final days of the race—despite the fact that his wife is a member of the pro-Clinton AFSCME.

"The people that I have talked to think that he is very genuine in terms of supporting the issues that are important to workers and their families," Sager says, noting that other local chapters of the electrical union in other parts of the country have endorsed Sanders. "He talks about the things that will work in making a difference. Getting everybody to be involved."

Lance Coles, the communications director for the state's AFL-CIO, predicts that ample union support could propel Sanders to a statewide victory on Monday. "I've said that for a long time," he says. "I think Bernie's going to squeak it out here, I think he's going to pull it."

Coles' union, the American Postal Workers Union, has endorsed Sanders, and he's been active in boosting Sanders' efforts. "Come Monday night, there's going to be a lot of Bernie support," he says. "Probably a lot more than what people think."

"The Bernie [events] are like pep rallies," he adds. "They’re much more, I don't want to say agitated, but excited, there's a lot more energy in their events. Most of the stuff I see for Hillary is: one, she's always late, which pisses a lot of people off. And I understand that with Secret Service, I get it, I understand that. But a lot of people are really frustrated with that."

Last fall, when Clinton skipped the state's AFL-CIO convention while Sanders and other candidates attended, local labor leaders groused to Bloomberg Businessweek's Josh Eidelson that they were wary of Clinton, primarily over her shifting positions on free trade. "I would love to have her be the first female president," Stacey Andersen, a representative of the Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics & Allied Workers International Union, told Eidelson, "but she’s going to have to come out a little bit stronger than what I’ve been seeing when it comes to labor-friendly issues." And as the Intercept recently noted, Clinton's union endorsements have been the decisions of the group's leadership, while the handful of unions backing Sanders have done so after directly polling their members.

On Monday afternoon, Sanders appeared at the local hall of the United Steelworkers in Des Moines (showing up on time) to assure the crowd—whose national union has yet to endorse—that he's the better candidate for organized labor. Parked outside was a red campaign bus from the National Nurses United emblazoned with an endorsement for Sanders. "The most trusted profession trusts Bernie," the side of the bus read. The Sanders staff distributed signs to the crowd reading, "Vote Labor Values, Labor for Bernie."

"I like his views and his opinions," Josh Fleenor, a 35-year-old tire builder in the local union, told me before the event. "Bring America back."

Throughout his speech, Sanders touted his record of fighting for low-wage workers, defending efforts to block trade agreements—a veiled dig at Clinton—and to expand union membership through measures such as card check. "I don't get any money, and I don't want any money, from corporations," he said. "Never got a nickel. Don't want any money from the billionaire class. But I am very grateful for the support that I've received from the Steelworkers throughout my entire political career. Thank you guys, very, very much."

"Initially I didn't think he could win," said Jerry Addy, a retired operating engineer at the event. "Now I think he can win. I just think Bernie's a better person, a better candidate. Bernie's doing retail. Hillary's doing wholesale."