In Wisconsin, a state decided by less than 1 percent in the past two presidential elections, local union mail is heading to members in advance of the Oct. 5 start of early and absentee voting, reports Sue Ledbetter, the Labor 2008 state director. IAM Local 873, made up of workers at John Deere in Horicon, Wis., and UAW Local 469, whose members work at Master Lock, are just two of the many locals whose presidents are sending letters to their membership in support of Obama.

UAW Local 469 President Tony Rainey already has sent out one letter with more on the way. All UAW locals in Wisconsin will mail four letters to their members about why Obama is the right choice to turn around America.

Alex Hoekstra, president of IAM Local Lodge 873, also has mailed a letter to 1,600 members, active and retired, about Obama's pro-working families stance. The plan is to send out two or three more letters in the weeks to come.

This election is about change for working people, and Alaska is a state that hangs in the balance.  

Many people across the country are paying attention to Alaska's U.S. Senate race, as AFL-CIO endorsed Democrat Mark Begich attempts to unseat indicted 40-year incumbent Ted Stevens.  But that isn't the only race that could signal substantial change in Alaska.

Democrat Ethan Berkowitz is posing a serious threat to 35-year incumbent Don Young in the race for Alaska's only U.S. House seat.

On September 19, APWU 72 activists mailed 2,100 mailings to active and retired members of APWU 72, which covers the Cleveland, Ohio area.  The mailing included a letter from APWU 72 President Danny Pride and a flyer about Sen. Barack Obama's policies on working families' issues.  

Mr. Pride said, "The active members' main concern right now is really the economy, because it is in such a tailspin that it affects the wages and how far you can stretch a dollar.  And with the collapse of these major institutions here lately, I'm sure it's going to create some more anxiety.  Fortunately for us, we have a very good collective bargaining agreement which kind of buffers us from some of that," but because even union workers must consider their economic foundation shaky these days, it's important to make sure they have the information they need to make educated decisions on Election Day.  

Beverly Shealy, President of APWU 72 Retirees' Chapter, said that for member education, local union mail is ideal, especially for reaching retired workers.  "All of them aren't able to come down to our retiree meetings, so if we keep them informed by a mailing then it keeps them abreast upon what's going on," she said.  

Written by National AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff

During the week of November 15, thousands of union members and their allies marched, rallied, handbilled, phoned in, did street theater, and otherwise raised hell at the offices of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in more than 20 cities across the the United States.

One thousand people rallied at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, DC on November 15 and marched to the National Labor headquarters of the NLRB where they rallied again and demanded that the Labor Board be closed for renovations until a new governing board could be appointed by a new President.

That demand was echoed vigorously from Albuquerque to Albany and from Nashville to Denver.

What caused the uproar?

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is charged with administering the National Labor Relations Act.  That act, passed in 1935, regulates workers' rights and labor relations in most of America's private sector.

According to its preamble, the act was passed to encourage collective bargaining, freedom of association, and worker organization.
Yet during the last half of September and the first half of October, the NLRB handed down 61 decisions that further restrict and weaken already shamefully weak and ineffective workers' rights in America.
First, the decisions make it harder for workers to form a union through a majority sign up.  Most workers who form a union in this country these days do so through a majority sign up process.  That is because the NLRB elections system is so broken that workers avoid it when they can.  The Chamber of Commerce and Big Business are at war against workers' freedom to form unions through majority sign up - and it looks like they have successfully enlisted the Board on their side. Second, the decisions make it harder for workers who are illegally fired to recover back pay. Third, for workers who come to a job intending to try to form a union, these decisions have created a legalized form of job discrimination.  Union supporters who are illegally denied employment are treated as second-class workers.

Finally, Justice delayed is justice denied. The language used by this Labor Board in the Dana decision will be used by the corrupt corporate and radical right-wing forces as arguments against passage of the fair and urgently needed Employee Free Choice Act.

But this is not the first time the Bush Labor Board has gone out of its way to weaken workers' rights, especially the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.  Since Bush was inaugurated, his board has acted regularly to deny collective bargaining and organizing protection to millions of workers across our country and throughout our economy.  They took away Labor Board coverage from many disabled workers, university and graduate employees, and others.  Then last year in the infamous Kentucky River and Oakwood cases they caused as many as eight million non-supervisory, non-management workers to be inaccurately labeled as supervisors so that they would be denied collective bargaining coverage and any opportunity to form a union - and so that many who had already organized could have their union busted.

It is now obvious what the Bush Board has done and is doing.  It is an open and naked power grab.

Knowing that unions, the labor movement, and organized workers are the most effective counterweight to corrupt corporate power, they are determined to weaken that counterweight as much as possible - even as the American people are more distrustful of right-wing than ever.
Knowing that union members regardless of race, gender, region or ethnicity are amongst the most active and loyal voters for progressive politicians, this Bush Labor Board is determined to deny union membership to as many workers as possible.

They realize that absent the union vote the 2006 Congressional landslide would have been dead even.

This Labor Board has consistently reversed 70 years of precedent and established law to make a joke and a mockery of the National Labor Relations Act.

It should not be a surprise to any of us.  Radical right-wing Republicans stole the 2000 election.  They stole votes from African-Americans in 2004 and they attempted to steal votes in 2006.  In tax breaks, single-source contracts, and defense spending they have stolen the Nation's Treasury to give to the wealthy all over the world.

America needs a strong and vibrant Labor Movement.  Workers forming unions in the 20 years after the passage of the National Labor Relations Act from 1935 to 1955 that created the broad and deep middle class that is America's greatest strength.

It is our Labor Movement that is the most effective counterweight to corrupt corporate power.

It is this Labor Movement and the Labor Movement around the world that is the most vigorous and effective opponent of right-wing ideology and its logical end of fascism.

For the United States to have a strong Labor Movement, average workers must be free to join it and to establish new unions in workplaces without unions.  

That is not the case today.  Though the Bush Labor Board has greatly accelerated the assault, workers' rights in America have been weakened steadily since the Reagan Administration.  For at least 25 years workers in America have been routinely fired and retaliated against for trying to form unions and bargain collectively.  Human Rights Watch has documented the assault.  Dr. Kate Brofenbrenner has documented the assault.  American Rights at Work have documented it.

All this is why our country so desperately needs the worker protection that will be provided by the Employee Free Choice Act.  During both House and Senate votes in March and June of this year, the legislation won majority support.  But we need a Senate that can win 60 votes to break a corrupt corporate backed Republican filibuster and a Democratic President who will sign it - and use some political capital to pass it in the Senate.

So with December 10, International Human Rights Day, approaching, please remember that they key to our prosperity lies in our most fundamental right -- the right to freely associate, to speak out, and to organize.

As the Bluegrass Express bus tour continued to roll through Kentucky on Tuesday, a quick change of plans relocated our afternoon leaflet stops from Madisonville to Paducah, in far-western Kentucky. Although western Kentucky often is seen as an area that's less than friendly toward unions, bus volunteer Jeff Wiggins, who is president of the Western Kentucky AFL-CIO Area Council, treated me, Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan and AFL-CIO Field Representative Don Slaiman to a very different glimpse of the rich history of the area's labor movement.

The city of Paducah has a mile-long mural painted along a flood wall next to the Ohio River. In 2004, artist Herb Roe added a panel depicting the city's annual Labor Day parade, which was first held in 1892. The mural depicts a parade in the mid 1970s with a massive crowd of local labor activists, including W.C. Young carrying a giant "Solidarity" banner through the city's streets.

Young, who hailed from Paducah, and died in 1996, was a nationally known labor and civil rights leader. He began as a member of the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks in 1941, when Jim Crow racial segregation and discrimination were the law and the social order in western Kentucky. Throughout his life, Young worked tirelessly to change this state of affairs, dedicating himself to the common causes of organized labor and the civil rights. He was a leader in the NAACP, the A. Philip Randolph Institute and the AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education and journeyed to South Africa in the 1990s to protest apartheid.

I was very moved to see the mural, a beautiful testament to the incredible transformational effect Young and others in the labor movement have had on the American society in the past decades. That evening, while we distributed leaflets at the massive Gerdau Ameristeel plant in nearby Calvert City, I made a special effort to reach out and have conversations with the steelworkers coming in and out of the plant, rather than simply hand them the leaflets as they walked by. I wanted to hear their stories and to learn more about how union members in western Kentucky continue to change their society for the better to this very day.  

I felt sure that the workers I spoke to were keeping Young's wise and simple words alive:

You are supposed to love your brother and sister. That's the way it is with the union movement.

Cross Post from AFL-CIO NOW: http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/10/24/harold -johnson-knows-the-connection-between-po litics-and-organizing/

Bernard Pollack, AFL-CIO field coordinator, is working on the union movement's campaign to elect a working family-friendly governor in Kentucky. Last week, he joined AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff and 153 union members and allies in a labor luncheon with workers at Ohio Valley Aluminum Co. who are seeking to form a union with the United Steelworkers. Nurses on strike at Appalachian Regional Healthcare hospitals also took part.

Kentucky rain keeps pourin' down, and up ahead's another town, that I'll go walkin' thru, with the rain in my shoes...searchin' for you, in the cold Kentucky rain.

So sang Elvis Presley about the harsh weather that, unfortunately for the first few stops of the Bluegrass Express union-member mobilization tour, Kentucky occasionally experiences.

Last night's worksite leaflet stop at the Commonwealth Aluminum plant in Hawesville and this morning's stop at the massive Century Aluminum plant in Lewisport would have been rained out if it weren't for the absolute dedication of the volunteers who spent hours handing out leaflets to steelworkers leaving and arriving at the plants.

Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan, Western Kentucky AFL-CIO Area Council President Jeff Wiggins, UAW Local 2370 President Tim Smith, AFL-CIO field representative Don Slaiman, United Steelworkers (USW) Local 9443 President Richard Hass and yours truly stood outside the plant gates in the dark, amidst the wind and rain, rain and even more rain, to distribute information on incumbent Gov. Ernie Fletcher's disastrous history of hurting working families.

All told, the leaflets were a success. We distributed hundreds of fliers, and almost all the workers we spoke to were receptive and friendly. But, ironically, many of them remarked on our dedication to stand out in the rain. The subtext to their comments seemed to be an unanswered question: "Why go through so much bother?"

An answer came easily to Smith. A big grin on his face, he said:

I love doing this! The reason we're out here is to reach out to our members.  Reach out to our members and let them know how important it is to get out and vote November the 6.  

To Tim Smith, it's just that simple. Communication among members is the only way unions can effect positive change in the political arena.  If we want the government's policies to address our concerns--health care, good jobs, retirement security and the dozens of others--then we have to make sure that union members are informed and elect good candidates to positions of power. And if it takes a sopping-wet leaflet or two, or 200,000, that's no trouble at all.

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Paid for by AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Treasury Fund.

Toot! Toot! Look out, Kentucky, the Bluegrass Express is coming through!  

Starting today, the "It's Our Time" Bluegrass Express tour is taking off to mobilize union members to elect working family-friendly candidates in the upcoming statewide elections. The Bluegrass Express bus will travel hundreds of miles, criss-crossing the state and stopping several times a day at worksites in Ashland, Calvert City, Elizabethtown, Hazard, Lexington, Madisonville and dozens of other Kentucky towns.

I'll be on the bus, along with Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan, Mine Workers political coordinator Steve Earle, UAW Labor 2007 coordinator Danny Ernestes, AFL-CIO field representative Don Slaiman and many other elected officials, labor leaders and union volunteers along the way. We will stop at worksites ranging from steel mills to call centers, auto plants to hospitals, coal mines to colleges, not to mention rail yards, power plants and fire stations, to pass out leaflets and talk to union members about what's at stake--vital issues, including health care, good jobs and the freedom to form and join unions.

We won't be getting much sleep, for sure, but we will be energizing union members in the final few weeks before the election to steer Kentucky away from the middle-class disaster course that Gov. Ernie Fletcher put them on!

Says Londrigan:  

This is our time. We're doing whatever it takes to make sure that on Nov. 6, elected officials will hear the voice of Kentucky working families loud and clear.

I'll be sending in daily blog reports from the road, look for them here. Toot, toot!  

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Paid for by AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Treasury Fund.