A Union Gets Back to Door-Knocking in Pennsylvania and Beyond

In the wake of the 2022 midterms, UNITE HERE learned it needed to focus on more down-ballot races, too.

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When the call went out for volunteers for the 2024 campaign season, Carlos, a UNITE HERE shop steward at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, made clear he is a “put me in, Coach” kind of canvasser. “Every time y’all got a campaign or something going on, let me know,” Carlos told his union’s organizing team. “I’m ready to go; I love this stuff.”

Carlos landed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the state capital, about 90 minutes west of Philadelphia. He’s been canvassing in mostly Black downtown neighborhoods, as well as in the surrounding white rural suburbs of Dauphin County, which include Penbrook, Lower Paxton Township, and Swatara Township. The residents in both areas, he says, were “pretty cool.” Many of those residents didn’t seem to have much experience with political canvassers, but when Carlos came calling, they wanted to be heard out and get information about the candidates and what they should do to be able to vote.

An experienced canvasser who worked on campaigns last year, Carlos doesn’t mind listening. “Even the people supporting the opposition, they just want to talk,” he says. “I haven’t run into too many people that’s off the hook, whether it’s Republican, Democrat, or in the middle.”

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Having more canvassers like Carlos out talking with voters marks a back-to-basics shift in UNITE HERE’s organizing for the 2024 presidential campaign. With 300,000 members in food services, gaming, hotel, laundry, transportation, and related sectors in the United States and Canada, the hospitality union opened the 2024 election season with organizing campaigns in three battleground states: Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. It has since extended its reach into Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, New York, and California.

Gwen Mills, president of the UNITE HERE International Union, explains that the union made a conscious decision to focus not only on the presidential race but also on down-ballot seats in both houses of Congress. That shift was a tough lesson learned after the 2022 midterms. Mills says the union got too caught up in the national media-driven “red wave” narrative and didn’t go after those seats then. When the votes came in, Republicans had gained control of the House by only a four-seat margin.

What that means in 2024 is looking at a map that works for the union, rather than reacting to news media hype that ends up being at odds with the on-the-ground realities the union sees. A similar problem occurred in 2016 when the national media projected a Hillary Clinton win—which turned out to be a major misread of epic proportions.

UNITE HERE’s Keystone State campaign has targeted working-class Black and Latino voters in the big prize, Philadelphia; there are about 375 canvassers in Philly and another 25 in Harrisburg. Other key focal points are smaller cities in suburban Philly counties like Chester in Delaware County and Norristown in Montgomery County, as well as Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. The union has teamed up with other organizations to canvass another Philadelphia suburb, Bucks County, one of the state’s premier swing locales. As for down-ballot races, for example, in Dauphin County, the union has zeroed in on a state Senate seat and the seat held by Republican Rep. Scott Perry, who pre-requested a January 6th presidential pardon from then-President Trump, and has been investigated by the FBI for his possible involvement in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

UNITE HERE’s operation is based on a person-to-person methodology focusing on dejected and undecided voters, a strategy that Mills views as more important with an uncertain electoral outlook. The closeness of the presidential contest (and many down-ballot contests, too) only increased the need for the person-to-person contacts that can be decisive in “a battle for every single vote until the last possible minute,” she says. Facebook ads or TV commercials, she adds, won’t break through to these kinds of voters.

Overall, UNITE HERE has exceeded its canvassing goals. To date, its members have knocked on roughly four million doors and engaged in upwards of 500,000 front-door conversations with voters. That’s more doors and voters than it has ever reached before.

If this strategy contributes to a Kamala Harris win, Mills sees UNITE HERE continuing to do what it normally does: negotiating contracts and organizing workers. If the vice president loses, however, the union plans to go on the offensive to protect labor organizing methods that may come under attack, such as “card check neutrality,” wherein workers can sign union affiliation cards that an independent arbitrator tallies and verifies, and, if there is a majority, workers can establish a bargaining unit. In this scenario, with Trump in the White House, unions would also likely have to join forces with other groups to protect the few social supports that Americans have, such as Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

UNITE HERE would have to get into a defensive crouch, too, to protect its members, who are primarily women, people of color, and immigrants from 200 countries, from the dangers of living in an environment where the president empowers his supporters to debase and attack people who don’t look like them. Trump’s plans for sweeping deportations may also pose a threat to some of UNITE HERE’s immigrant members, or those members’ families and friends. After Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, Mills says the threats are quite stark. “Most people, if they’re women or immigrants or Latinos or white working-class folks in a union, they just understand they’re on Trump’s chopping block,” she says. “The event just solidified why we are so heavily invested in the ground game in this election.”

Though an American president isn’t well positioned to deal with high grocery prices, Carlos heard quite a bit about grocery costs on the doors, with one voter complaining that “eggs were $5.99 a dozen!” In downtown Harrisburg, people expressed fears about how Trump behaved when he was in the White House and uneasiness about his comments on ending voting and changing the Constitution. In the Harrisburg suburbs, he talked to a few Republican Harris voters who backed her position on abortion and reproductive rights. However, like some Philadelphia voters, they worried about a woman running the country and how she would handle issues like the southern border. Some spoke out against Trump, saying flatly, “I don’t need a clown running my country.”

It isn’t unusual for voters not to know or remember where their polling places are or even who to vote for. But Carlos ran into one even more troubling issue in Harrisburg. “Some people knew there was an election, but didn’t know who was running, nothing at all,” he says. “Which is crazy to me.”

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