The author is a member of UNITE HERE in Florida.
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It was often asked whether the “race factor” would keep Obama from winning over white voters. Many pointed to figures in early September that showed a 26-point advantage for McCain among white voters without a college degree, which would fall to 18 points by Election Day. In sharp contrast, Obama beat McCain by 23 points among white, union member non-college graduates.
What led to such a striking disparity between union and non-union white voters?
Starting in the early months of the primary and general elections, labor leaders were forced to address the real possibility that racism would trump economic issues. Initial reports from local officials around the country confirmed their fears, and a national poll conducted by Democracy Corps between Sept. 8 and 10 put Obama at only 44 percent in white union households.
It is clear that the financial crisis greatly propelled the shift in the white vote toward Obama beginning in late September. However, the mass mobilization of labor’s national organizational apparatus to educate white voters was a critical complement to the economic downturn.
This organized effort materialized in impressive numbers. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney noted that in the last four days of the campaign alone, 250,000 volunteers from affiliated unions made 5.5 million phone calls and visited 3.9 million union households. Overall, the labor federation’s figures show that unions reached out to more than 13 million voters in 24 states (MarketWatch, Nov. 5). The labor union coalition Change to Win also mobilized its members by the hundreds of thousands during the campaign.
Organization enables shift in consciousness
This mass organizational effort by the labor movement, undertaken in the context of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, systematically challenges the backward ideas of racism that are still pervasive among white workers. Organized labor struggles create the material basis to understand the necessity for multinational unity. The basis for that unity includes experiences of unified struggles against the bosses, whose exploitation they feel in and out of the workplace, combined with a direct and open challenge to views based on racist prejudice.
This particular struggle revolved around the union leadership’s urgency in getting a Democrat in the White House given the worsening economic crisis and growing attacks on labor. Regardless of whether the support of union leaders for Obama will translate into substantial gains for workers, their tactical orientation necessitated a struggle against racism and their organizational apparatus enabled a mass, progressive shift in consciousness.
That is not to say that all racist white workers have shed their backward ideas. Nor is to say that the mixed legacy of the labor movement in regards to racism has been overcome by the initiatives of the mainly white, male leadership that has so often let those backward ideas go unchallenged.
The change workers sought at the ballot on Nov. 4 will not come through an Obama administration. Obama refuses to support equal rights for the LGBT community and supports increases in “workplace immigration enforcement,” a thinly veiled euphemism for the fascist-like ICE raids that terrorize the Latino and larger immigrant communities. His brand of “change” is already alienating broad sectors of working-class and oppressed people.
Nor will real change come from the union leadership while they bask in their multi-million-dollar investment in Obama. Top union leadership may become increasingly hesitant to engage in struggle as workers turn to stronger, more militant demands in response to the dire economic situation. The need for broader internal democratic reform within the unions and more rank-and-file control over the direction of the labor movement will consequently grow.
Multinational unity and recognition of the struggles of other oppressed groups must be integral parts of the struggle for a society free of exploitation. Overcoming racism and other divisions that exist among workers is a must if we are to forge a conscious, unified struggle against inhuman and criminal layoffs, budget cutbacks, foreclosures and evictions, and other economic hardships the ruling class is dispensing as a means to save its wealth and privilege.
Revolutionaries, especially those integrated into the rank and file of the labor movement, must play a leading role in tipping the scale against racism, sexism, homophobia and other manifestations of bigotry during the day-to-day struggles of union organizing inside the workplace. At the same time, activists must address the limitations of trade unionism and its inability to tackle the inherent exploitation workers face under capitalism.
Providing real and living examples of the necessity for revolutionary, socialist consciousness among workers is a must if we are to develop an organizational form that can challenge the economic system behind oppression and inequality. Just as the organizational apparatus of the labor movement pushed working-class consciousness forward to meet the needs of an immediate struggle, a revolutionary organization can push working-class consciousness forward to meet the needs of the struggle for revolution.
This is precisely the goal of the Party for Socialism and Liberation: To build a party not detached from the workers struggle, but one that grows and develops within every struggle of workers and oppressed peoples. Such a party is needed to bring about the ideas, the leadership and the organization to fight for and win real change towards a just and equal world.
