By Susan Zachem

Labor's new strategies for political action are showing promise, but there's a long road ahead if unions are to turn around the anti-worker climate of the 1980s and 1990s and improve the picture for organizing and contract bargaining, GCIU Vice Pres. Lawrence Martinez said.

Martinez, who chairs the General Board Legislative Committee, advised participants at the GCIU's Coordination of Negotiations Conference that the AFL-CIO's new political action agenda produced a stronger voice for working families in the 1996 and 1998 elections.

In 1994, Martinez noted, the Republican Party took the majority in the House with a 22-seat margin. "They came in with an agenda to cut Medicare to pay for tax cuts for the very rich, cut education, gut the Occupational Safety and Health Act, pass a balanced budget amendment, and enact a national right-to-work law. Labor slept, and we got beat badly in 1994."

However, in 1996, Martinez said, the AFL-CIO's new leadership tried new issue-oriented approaches with the understanding that "it's hard to organize when you don't have the laws to force employers to sit down and bargain with you. You can organize all you want, but if you don't have the favorable laws, you're just not going to get things done."

The federation and its affiliates began a mass mobilization of union families at the grass-roots level, Martinez said. The GOP's margin in the House was cut to 11 seats, and President Clinton, who was endorsed by labor, won the election. The erosion of the Republican majority helped to put the brakes on job-destroying fast track trade legislation and defeat GOP bills that would have eroded federal wage and hour laws and allowed company unions, he noted.

In the 1998 elections, the AFL-CIO and its affiliates did an even better job at mobilization, Martinez said. For the first time in history, the party in power in the White House gained seats in the House during an off-year election, reducing the GOP majority to five seats.

"We turned that around for the first time," Martinez said. "So we're on the right track."

But unions want to do a lot more, Martinez said. The AFL-CIO recently committed more than $40 million over the next two years to coordinate political action in districts across the United States.

Labor's goal is to win back the majority in the House and possibly the Senate, where more Republican seats are open than Democratic seats in 2000, Martinez said. With the crucial issue of redistricting following the 2000 census, labor also is targeting governorships and state legislatures where the redistricting will be done, he noted.

Martinez asked GCIU locals to participate early and often in labor's political action campaign. He urged every local to appoint a political action coordinator to work with the International and area AFL-CIO groups on grass-roots mobilization.

Other suggestions made by Martinez included voter registration drives at every local meeting and raising donations for GCIU's Political Action Fund at local meetings and at the bargaining table through dues checkoff.

"If every member put in a dollar or 50 cents a month, can you imagine the impact we could have?" Martinez asked.

Some of that possible impact is demonstrated by the 1996 and 1998 election results, Martinez said. "In the past two elections, labor has been the key to success and [the candidates] understand that for the first time. We're no longer just someone who gives them money. We're getting the vote out. We're getting the people out there. And it's being done by our membership at the grass-roots level," he said.