Tuesday November 3, 5:30pm EST
“Florida victory party tonight!” says the president of a large mid-western union local. “By the end of this phone bank today we will see the results for Florida. We will have already won, let’s all agree to meet back on here. What’s everybody drinking? I’ve got whiskey, neat.”
The phone bank is lighter in attendance this evening. Think most of the other “volunteers” (mostly staffers or union officers) are taking the last night off to watch the ouroboros loop of CNN, MSNBC, and NPR coverage.
“Bourbon for me,” says one campaign lead. “Yup stick it out. Make these calls, we’ll be chasing down last minute voters, a lot will have already voted, but there’s always that one person you get at 7:45pm who needs to make it out. You’ve worked so hard on these calls, the polls look in our favor, Texas, Georgia, Florida, everything is on the table.”
It is the final night of a month and half of 5-6 days a week member call lists. Despite being a receptionist and holding down admin responsibilities in the office all day, my every evening is shifted to GOTV. Dial tones, wrong numbers, deadlines, and the occasional member.
“My bold prediction. We take 7 seats in the house. We take an Alaska senator, Georgia goes to an easy runoff, and we take the other outright. North Carolina. Maine. Hell, South Carolina or Montana, let’s send Lindsay Graham packing.”
I sit quietly on mute and turn on a little lamplight so my face is front lit. I’m wondering if we’ve been on the same calls. The polls are promising. But I just had a nurse, working mandatory OT for months in a COVID+ ward, tell me, “I might as well have voted for Mickey Mouse when it’s between these two.” The night before we had our biggest phone bank yet and most of us were commiserating on the people who we talked about issues with only for them to apologize for voting for Trump. I take the last gulp of a cold brew.
“I hope you’re right!” I say before logging into the VAN and starting on my last list.
I almost believe it for a second. Starting out calls everyday in a zoom room that gives the Politico headlines of leads in the polls, the strategists are detailing which new Red states are in play. Checking out for the day, and the phone bankers keep reporting the good news.
“I got all Biden supporters.”
“At first they seemed like they weren’t interested, but they were all against Trump.”
“They said they never tell who they vote for, but I could tell it was Biden.”
I kept wondering if I was in the same phone bank as these people, ready to hit the panic button. Consistently, it’s a mixed bag for me and I feel like a Debbie Downer reporting on hard conversations with members who can’t find it in them to vote for “Sleepy Joe.” In a Right-to-Work state where members have to reaffirm if they want to pay dues I’m getting around 45% for Biden, 35% for Trump, 10% won’t say, not voting, or stop asking. In moments the thought that the polling errors of 2016 might be repeated pop into my mind, only to be quashed because “it’s a bigger margin this time.” Yet the campaign leads (bless their hearts) continue the daily pep rally and sell us on the vision of a Blue Wave, better yet, a Labor Wave:
This is how we win! This is do or die. We are building the base for organizing! Runoffs, midterms, next election. Members are ready to be moved! Your job is on the line. Right-to-Work? Never heard of her. We aren’t electing a saint. Labor is built different. Well, we laid the groundwork for future conversations at least.
I don’t want to exhaust Presidential election coverage much further, Biden squeaked out a victory, winning back some mid-western states and even flipping Georgia and Arizona. This will be cause for a public celebration in the AFL-CIO. The internal gears of the United States largest labor federation backfired a few times, but did not stop running. While the blowout didn’t occur as polls predicted, there was no flipping of the Senate, and the Democrats lost seats in the House—the 2016 nightmare was averted.
Open up the hood, though, and you’ll see 40% of union households still went for Trump, with a 51% majority of union households going for Trump in the key AFL-CIO battleground state Pennsylvania. The bluest of the Blue states passed incredibly disempowering anti-worker laws (Prop 22 in California), and Trump strongholds, like Florida, overwhelmingly passed $15/hr minimum wage by over 20 points (62%-38%). More Black and Latino people voted for Trump than in 2016, more working-class and lower income people trended towards Trump this time around, while Biden won back more rich suburbanites. While less catastrophic results, the polls were wrong again. And while there will be protests and celebration, reflection on the program will remain out of the question. The car is still running, and so they’ll keep pouring more gas into political departments.
I spent the past month and a half making phone calls to union members and potential union members, between two different Joe Biden phone banks. One, the cold cut “Hey I’m a union member, this is the AFL-CIO, vote for Joe.” It’s not hard to look past the AFL phone bank’s usefulness, it’s basically a poll of members in Pennsylvania and Florida. It’s curt, methodical, worth hundreds of thousands of volunteer/staff hours. The other phone bank while smaller in scope does try harder, it’s an emotional conversation meant to illicit hope. Ideally, even the members who don’t make the commitment are left with an open door, and a temporary ear to hear issues that are going on at work. Of which there are many right now. We get data, they get a chance for follow up.
I want to dig deeper into these organizing calls, an A-E-I-O-U conversation for a “political ask.” That is, talking to fellow members about their issues at work or in the community, digging deep at what is agitating them, educating them on how a vote for Biden is a vote for the union is a solution to X issue, if they say yes, inoculating on how Trump will try to steal the election, so we need to organize by volunteering to get mass turnout, and pUshing members by—asking again. After a few weeks of this, members are tired of the calls, after a month everyone involved feels like we’re making “asses of ourselves” and running on fumes.
Early October - Agitate!
After a string of Biden-positive shifts to start off, calling already engaged members, I get a new placement in the suburbs. The shift is going poorly. Nobody answers for nearly an hour: Voicemail, dead number, voicemail, voicemail, two rings then voicemail, straight to voicemail, wrong number, disconnected, please stop calling me, straight to voicemail. I finally get a hit, a woman on her smoke break at a major hospital. We start chatting. I tell her I’m a union member and want to hear how work has been for people on the frontlines.
“You’re lucky you got me, they have me working mandatory OT since April,” she says. “Working 60 hours a week, it’s nonstop. Only had time off when I had COVID. They say I’m an essential worker, and they won’t even give us hazard pay. Management is pretending this is because of the union, I know that’s a lie. My husband works as a union welder, he isn’t around anybody for his job and he’s getting hazard pay. I’m in the COVID+ Ward and they give us nothing.”
“How are folks responding when management says that?” I ask. “Are they buying bullshit?”
“Yes,” she pauses for the first time. “I’m one of six members left in my local. There are other nurses who make fun of me for paying dues, because they get all the benefits and don’t have to pay a cent. They aren’t wrong, but every year it makes the union weaker and weaker. Hell some of the women are getting jobs as contractors and making more than us, non-union, in the same hospital. My sister works at a beer bottling plant and everyone is in the union there, they just won a 20% raise. We haven’t gotten a raise in years. I should just go work there.”
She knows all about Right-to-Work, how the far right fought for this, and now her and her co-workers suffer the consequences. She tells me they need to fight to get membership up to win. Here’s where I’m supposed to take note for follow up and bring up the election, who our union endorsed.
She laughs.
“I might as well vote for Mickey Mouse,” she says. “You know what? It’s between two cartoon characters. They’re up there falling asleep, talking bullshit. You know what, I will vote for Mickey Mouse. What is Biden or Trump going to do to change this? Our union president is a nice guy, but he’s retiring in December. Nobody wants to replace him and then we have five members left in this local.”
I tell her if she brings more workers like her into the organizing, maybe even she can run.
“Union president. Who cares who’s president of the United States?” she reiterates. “Might as well be a cartoon.”
She thanks me for listening and says she’ll see what happens, if the union will come and fix the local. I let her know that people like her are the ones who can fix the local. She laughs again, “Mickey Mouse ain’t running.”
Not a week later in the middle of one of Canada's most conservative provinces, Alberta, thousands of healthcare workers begin a massive industry-wide wildcat strike fending off budget cuts and layoffs. I think about texting her, but I know I’m not allowed.
Mid-October - Educate!
I’m calling into rural counties this time. The campaign lead says if we hit 50% Biden support here we should feel pretty confident about the state’s chances. Obviously this isn’t accounting for the 95% nobody picks up and that half that do “don’t want to tell anybody” who they vote for. But I understand they have to go by some metric I guess. She tells me that despite being from the midwest, she really doesn’t get the whole Midwestern Nice = not talking about the election. I think that probably means they are voting Trump and don’t want to tell you.
I call a woman who says work has been fine. She feels glad that she didn’t lose her job when the economy tanked. No work problems, so I ask how her family has been throughout the pandemic. She is worried about her kids.
“They don’t want to open the schools,” she says. “COVID, I know. But where are my kids going to go?”
“That’s a good question,” I say. “What are they doing now—Distance learning?”
“This distant learning is all fine and good in the city, but out here we don’t have high speed internet,” she says. “These kids have to go to school to use the internet and then what’s the point then? ‘Cause the internet is so important these days. You can’t get by without it. And now this means my kids can’t go to school.”
“What do you think it would take to change that?”
“Heck if I know,” she says. “It should just be out here already. I mean it’s like the electricity or the roads, it should be provided for.”
“A public resource, like the highway?”
“Exactly.”
This is going to be a wonky transition into a political ask, have any of the candidates ever talked about this? I quickly look up Biden’s “rural broadband” plan, but it’s got zero details. We’re likely the first non-DC comms people who have ever heard of it since it’s never come from a candidate's mouth.
“I appreciate you taking the time to talk, I really do,” she says. “But I never say how I’m voting.”
Mid-October - Inoculate!
We debrief our calls. I have a mixed bag to report. A Biden supporter, a couple Trump supporters, and the high-speed internet woman who would not say. A Candian friend posts a link of this New York Times op-ed to Twitter, which declares, “The Real Divide in America Is Between Political Junkies and Everyone Else.” On the call another phone banker lets us know about her night: mostly positive responses, but that she had an interesting call with someone named “Natasha” and warned us of “the dangers of the other side.”
“She had a thick accent,” the phone banker laughs. “I could barely understand her, but she’s from Russia so she’s gotta be for Trump.”
I pause, waiting for the campaign leads or someone else to step in. They say nothing and nod in their little Hollywood Squares.
“I have Russian family,” I say. “What does that mean?”
“Yeah, but you sound like you’ve been here awhile.”
Late-October - Organize!
We’re going to need all hands on deck to unseat the incumbent, can I sign you up to call your co-workers too?
“No”
Can I count on you to sign up for the app and reach out to 10 co-workers?
“No”
Can I count on you to talk with three people you haven’t spoken with yet?
“We talk about it at work sometimes. I talk about the election with my family”
I’m still calling rural counties. I’ve only gotten one member to agree to volunteer for a phone bank, she was vice president of her local. The zoom meeting check ins are at a lull for sure, but Biden holds rock solid in the polls. The only new volunteer I’ve seen is a very sweet older woman, but the staffers and officers are really slogging through. Most are here a few days a week, but me and a few others are on the daily grind. We commiserate at the end of the night that at least it beats the AFL-CIO 30-second conversations.
Sometimes I talk with older members that just want someone to listen. This gives me some reprieve from the drudgery, so I let the calls linger even after they tell me they already voted for Biden and that they’re not going to volunteer. One woman gives me advice on how to talk to my step-mom who’s also a union member from the Rust Belt, agrees with 99% of the issues, but then says “she’s upset with socialists who just want abortions.” The woman is in her late seventies and tells a long story about going to a women’s meeting in the late-60s. She has four kids, with a terrible man that hurt her. But when she tried to leave him she’d end up pregnant and felt trapped into staying for too many years. Then at this women’s meeting, she says, every women in the room had had an abortion while it was still illegal. They risked injury, they risked death, they risked birth defects, because most of these families couldn’t afford another kid or were not able to care for one. She says, “Birth control saved my life.”
“Now you tell your step-mother that you heard this from a 77 or 78 year old woman,” she says. “Promise me you’ll tell her that.”
I do.
Monday November 2, 8pm EST - pUsh/Union!
Your fellow union members have voted to endorse Joe Biden for president can we count on you to vote with working familiescome November 3?
“The union should stay out of politics, I don’t care either way, but ain’t this a slap in the face to conservative members?”
Joe Biden is a proven fighter for working families and union members. Can we count on you to vote Joe?
“I just can’t vote for the guy. He’s been in politics 40-some years and what’s he got to show for it? Falling asleep onstage and forgetting where he’s at.”
I hear workplace safety is important. If we want a strong union we outta vote with someone who will stand up for us?
“I got COVID in April, broke my back in July, and I haven’t been back on the shop floor since. Wish the union kept politics out of this, cause Joe isn’t fixing that.”
Your fellow union members voted to get behind Joe, will you vote with your co-workers?
“I mean I don’t like Trump. Don’t get me wrong: I've been a union man all my life, was a shop steward, on the bargaining committee I don’t know how many times, my dad supported ten of us kids with his union job. But I got to vote with my heart. Trump will protect America’s interests. I’m sorry.”
Vote Blue?
“I’m sorry, I support the union and all it does, we need to be stronger, but I KNOW Trump won’t come for our guns.”
Joe?
“I’m sorry, I love the union and I’m no fan of Trump, but at least you know where he stands. He won’t refuse benefits to Americans and give them to illegals.”
Biden?
“I’m sorry, but..”
It’s the last phonebank before election night. The leads and local presidents are all giving final send off speeches. Thank you’s to everyone who’s stuck it out. In the speeches they all talk about how excited they are for tomorrow, but mostly the mood is somber and quiet, like the speakers just had to fill some time. Phone bankers share how tired they are of the election cycle, of dial tones, busy signals, and disconnected messages. The campaign leads say how proud they are of our hard work, but how sad it is we can’t be sharing pizza and beer at the union hall after each of these nights. Can’t argue.
We get to the usual check outs, and it seems like a few more phone bankers are ready to level on this one. One guy shares how strange it is that members frequently will apologize for voting Trump. Two of the full time phone bankers write in the chat they had the same experience. Then I do too. These members value the conversation about work and issues, they even agree with you on most everything but feel bad disappointing you on the ask to vote a certain way. Whether some other issue matters more, or like the campaign leads say, “they have a lifetime of propaganda to overcome, that won’t happen in one call.” It definitely won’t happen in one conversation—but when will it get done?
Strategically, many mainstream unions operate under the assumption that new union organizing is the mechanism that makes new Democrats. However, this seems less true year after year as the party realigns more and more away from working class issues, and offers more of the return to “normal.” Some of these workers say they haven’t heard from the union in four years. On the call they can talk an ear off about issues, even display a will to fight with their co-workers over them, but then come to view the union, volunteer, and the Democrats as an unholy trinity. Can we make headway and have those deeper convos about some of the troublesome, deep rooted prejudices (xenophobia, racism, misogyny, etc.) that are antithetical to solidarity? How would you even get to that point when someone thinks of us as synonymous with the Democrats that only call around every election? What box people check every four years shouldn’t be the marker a union measures by. Yet, each time the union political departments lose trying to beat the Democrat horse, they will find a way to “win” by moving the goal post. More wait and see. More laying the groundwork for midterms. More “the union” will take action for you with our power and influence. More politician’s willing to play golf and go out to lunch with a union executive, without promise of much more.
But with no end in sight for this pandemic, an impending economic spiral, and a Biden presidency met with Republic Senate and Supreme Court, the electoral bridge out of 2020 hell collapsed (again) before even finishing construction. It’s hard not to feel like this is by design, the “almost winning.” It sets up a situation so that the service union and technocratic Democratic Party can remain the architects of winning power in the future. Each step and false start is only further proof that their plan actually hasn’t been put in place yet. Save that for next time.
I take a deep breath. I know a lot of us are taking a moment to breathe right now, revolutionaries or not. I take another breath, perhaps for a second I feel less tired, perhaps we really did catch a break. Another breath. It certainly does not feel like winning feels. A breath again. God, do I want labor to win. A breath. But we’re onto the next one.