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Labor leaders in three swing states, Maine, North Carolina, and Texas, have launched a very promising initiative called the “Contract with Working America.” The idea is to use a deep canvass—extensive in-depth conversations—to learn what’s on the minds of working families, and then distill the results into an explicit plan of action that reflects actual worker views rather than top-down policy wonkery. The canvass has already reached hundreds of thousands of union members and nonmembers.
According to labor leaders in the three states, the process has spillover benefits both in organizing drives and in political campaigns. In Texas, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico and gubernatorial contender Gina Hinojosa have already signed the Texas variant of the contract. In Maine on Labor Day, Democratic Senate nominee Troy Jackson announced a “Pledge to Working Mainers” drawing on the contract.
Braxton Winston, president of the North Carolina AFL-CIO, told me, “Deep canvassing allowed us to affirm and adjust what we thought we knew, rather than just assuming. It helped us reach out to a part of our membership that often doesn’t vote with us.”
The details of the contracts are not all that different from standard progressive policy platforms, but they have an authenticity and legitimacy that top-down programs lack because they are built directly on the expressed concerns of rank-and-file workers.
“The labor movement needs to lead and we need to have a broader moral vision that connects to a better life for working people,” says Matt Schlobohm, executive director of the Maine AFL-CIO. “That theory of change informs this whole project.”
I asked the organizers what surprised them from what they learned. One thing was that many working-class people put corruption ahead of even the cost of living. In the Texas version of the contract, the top three items are:
- Stop Washington corruption;
- Shift political power from special interests and wealthy elites back to everyday working families; and
- Make the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share.
Then come several items related to the cost of living; gas prices and drug prices; reliable and affordable health care; and not just affordable child care but “End a rigged system that punishes working parents. Guarantee access to essential benefits like paid sick days and family and medical leave and cap the cost of childcare.”
“People are expressing real-life hardships,” says Derrick Osobase of the Communications Workers of America, an executive board member of the Texas AFL-CIO. “The folks we listen to on the doors feel that necessary change can’t be done because the system is captured by big business.”
In the Maine version of the contract, called “Contract with Maine’s Working Class,” health care, housing, wages, energy, and child care rank at the top. This contract is powerful because it reflects, and speaks to, the lived experience of working families. And of course it provides a natural foundation for further political work, both union organizing and support for labor-friendly politicians.
“These are people we are mobilizing not just to go and vote but to be a part of changing their economic conditions,” Osobase adds. “We are going to be back to those folks. The process feeds into organizing and building a coalition.”
All three states are instructive because of their low percentage of unionized workers. In North Carolina and Texas, both right-to-work states, economic elites have long resisted unions as part of their strategy to divide Black and white workers. Maine used to have a larger labor movement but has been a victim of deindustrialization. Yet in all three states, labor punches above its weight.
In Maine, when Graham Platner suddenly exited the Senate race, the labor movement quickly demonstrated its prowess at on-the-ground organizing that nobody else in the state could match. While the other candidates to succeed Platner were struggling with local meetings and slates, the AFL-CIO and its affiliates, long close allies of Troy Jackson, moved quickly to get him the nomination by an overwhelming margin.
However, Maine labor leaders see the movement’s future not just in political alliances but in on-the-ground organizing. “We have to define an agenda created by us,” says Schlobohm. “If we don’t define this, somebody else will. The framework of a contract is key because union members understand contracts.”
Yet as Winston observes, the broad canvass process doesn’t come naturally to labor. “The core of labor is collectively bargained contracts, not this kind of outreach and active listening.”
It’s also noteworthy that in all three states, this process has been led by private-sector unions, notably UNITE HERE, CWA, and the UAW, as well as the SEIU and the AFT. This is also hopeful because the revival of the labor movement will depend on private-sector organizing as well as public workers.
And there are two other big benefits. As Osobase points out, a substantial portion of union members voted for Donald Trump because of the perception that neither party establishment was serving their interests. A vision and contract that flow from actual worker concerns can help get those members back and bridge over divisive cultural differences.
Within the Democratic coalition, a mobilized worker-led movement also serves as a counterweight to the corporate Democrats whose self-interested advice to move to the center would be lethal in general elections. America’s working class may have less class consciousness than in the era when unions were built by organizing blue-collar workers in large factories, but working people are getting screwed just as thoroughly.
“People learn through action,” says Maine’s Matt Schlobohm. Rather than seeking common ground with corporate centrists, “we need to listen to people and devise polarizing campaigns around pocketbook issues. That’s how we revive class formation.”
