Labor gears up for election

By DON McINTOSH, Staff Reporter

To beat back attacks by ballot measure bogeyman Bill Sizemore, Oregon's labor movement is gearing up a voter registration, education, and mail-in-the-vote campaign that will likely outstrip anything it has done in the past.

For both the AFL-CIO unions and independent unions like the Oregon Education Association (OEA), politics will be the priority between now and November.

At the Oregon AFL-CIO, the campaign is linked to the national AFL-CIO's "Labor 2000" electoral program,also known as "L2K." In June delegates to the state labor federation convention in Albany voted unanimously to support the political action plan - which is one of the most ambitious L2K plans in the nation because Oregon is the only state facing ballot measure attacks on labors ability to take part in politics. Two Sizemore-backed measures would limit the ability of unions to use payroll-deducted dues for political purposes, including lobbying and informing members. The AFL-CIO and its allies hope to decisively defeat the two measures in order to discourage imitators.

To do this, at the very least, unions must mobilize the membership. About 192,000 Oregonians are members of AFL-CIO-affiliated unions, and about 81,000 belong to the "big three" independent unions - the OEA, the Oregon School Employees Association, and the Oregon Nurses Association. About 80 percent of union members are registered to vote.

Thus, members of AFL-CIO unions account for just over 8 percent of the state's 1.9 million registered voters, and the independent unions another 3.5 percent, for a total of 11.5 percent. To leverage these numbers, unions are counting on being able to identify, contact, and turn out spouses and other family members who share households with union members. Counting household members, the union bloc totals one-fifth of the electorate.

Nationally, the AFL-CIO goal is to increase member voter registration by 10 percent. Oregon L2K organizers are shooting for an even bigger increase - registering (or confirming registration) of half the union members and household members believed to be unregistered. That's an estimated 57,650 new registrants. It's an ambitious goal, and to reach it the union federation must devote serious resources.

Overseeing the L2K effort are Tim Nesbitt, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO, and Bob Shiprack, executive secretary of the Oregon State Building and Construction Trades Council.

The campaign began in February with the hiring of union organizer April Rebollo to a special staff position coordinating the registration and mail-in-the-vote efforts. Two more staff are being hired, in Eugene and in Portland. Helped by computer support from the national AFL-CIO, Rebollo has been working with staff and stewards at every major union in the state to register the unregistered.

The Oregon AFL-CIO wants each of its 300-plus affiliated union locals, councils and state associations to set registration, information and turnout goals, and appoint an L2K coordinator responsible for meeting those goals. So far, 10 to 40 coordinators have been attending twice-monthly statewide meetings.

Many locals have no paid staff, and at others, staff are stretched to the limit. The state labor federation has offered to pay half the lost wages of rank-and-file members released from work to do L2K work if the local pays the other half. Affiliated unions vary considerably in the percentage of their members registered to vote, from as low as 44 percent at UNITE to 87 percent registration rate of the Musicians Union.

"I think it's going to pick up in no time," Rebollo said. "A lot of locals are going to start getting active when they realize what's going to be on the ballot in November."

Rebollo and the L2K coordinators will have to make every effort to register the unregistered before Oct. 17, the registration deadline for voting in the Nov. 7 election.

The work of registration starts with the creation of an accurate master list drawn from union membership lists. At the Oregon AFL-CIO, these come to Rebollo in forms ranging from computer database files to handwritten lists.

The master list is then compared with a list of voters compiled by the secretary of state. The comparison turns up names of voters who live at the same address and have the same name - these are considered members of union households. The comparison also shows which union members are not registered to vote.

That list of unregistered members goes out to union stewards, who will contact members individually. It will also be used for mass mailings, and for phone appeals using volunteers at 20 computer stations with autodial machines at union halls in Portland and Springfield.

Rebollo is concerned that some union members may think they're registered but have been purged from voter rolls as "inactive" voters - voters who have not cast a ballot in the last five years. Members who don't remember getting a ballot for the primary, she says, should re-register.

After registration, the second aim of the L2K campaign is education. With the stakes as high as a ban on all future labor participation in politics, the AFL-CIO has a crucial need to inform members of the ramifications of many of the ballots measures and then get them to the polls. The target is for 70 percent of union household members to vote pro-labor. At present, union members in Oregon are twice as likely to be registered Democrats as registered Republicans; one in five are registered as independents or with third parties.

To make sure no union member misses the message, the L2K campaign plans to distribute leaflets at all union work sites twice a month in July and August, and weekly in September and October. In October, leaflets and articles will appear in local union newsletters. The head of each local will send at least two letters to members discussing the campaign. The campaign will make at least two rounds of phone calls to all members. And it will call on members to talk to 10 other people about the election -family, friends and neighbors.

The independent unions have voter mobilization campaigns of their own, coordinated to some extent with the AFL-CIO. The allies will share research, polling, and ideas, but will have separate structures for mobilizing members.

In addition to the "right to participate" ballot measures, the Oregon Education Association must fight (in coalition with "responsible business" and public employee unions) a handful of "money out of the system" measures - anti-tax and anti-spending measures that could gut services and jobs in the public sector.

Plus, it will fight a measure linking teacher pay to student test scores, and a measure banning discussion of homosexuality in the schools.

The OEA plans to send an extensive voter guide to members. In the fall, the union will hold after-school meetings to educate and mobilize teachers with the goal of getting each member to do at least two hours of volunteer work sharing their message.