Unions stress over racism in the ranks

DENVER — Racial prejudice is being cited among senior union leaders to explain Sen. Barack Obama’s difficulty in winning over support from white rank-and-file members.

Obama (D-Ill.) is counting on organized labor to help win him key electoral votes in Ohio, Michigan and other battleground states.

{mosads}Karen Ackerman, political director for the AFL-CIO, acknowledged that Obama’s race is an important factor for some union members.

“This race is very complicated because there is an African-American candidate for president,” said Ackerman. “We feel there is a racial component for some union members, but we’re confident we can overcome that.”

Some in the labor movement say that Obama’s race has made it difficult for a significant number of union members to support him over Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive GOP nominee.

Twenty percent of voters who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in the primary now say they favor McCain, the expected Republican nominee, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Asked to comment, the Obama campaign responded in an email that economic issues will determine the presidential race. "Barack Obama is going to give95 percent of Americans a tax cut, while John McCain's plan would provide no tax relief for 100 middle class families while giving nearly $4 billion in tax breaks to big oil companies," a campaign spokesman said in an email. "Those are the issues that are going to decide this campaign."

Obama’s difficulties with white, working-class voters, who make up much of the ranks of organized labor, became apparent during the Democratic primary. Clinton beat Obama by large margins in states such as Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky, which have high concentrations of lower-income white voters.

“I think there’s more resistance than people want to admit,” said Edward Finkelstein, publisher of the Labor Tribune, a weekly publication distributed in about 80,000 union households in St. Louis and southern Illinois. “It’s ingrained that voting for a black is anathema to everything in their core.”

Finkelstein recounted a conversation he had with a female union member who has voted Democrat for years and stunned him by declaring that she would vote for McCain.

“I just can’t vote for that …” said the longtime Democrat, letting her words trail off.

Finkelstein said union members offer him different reasons for their reluctance to vote for a black president — even those who profess to having black friends.

“Everybody’s got a different reason,” said Finkelstein. “She’s afraid blacks are going to take over the country.”
Finkelstein, a member of the newspaper guild, said that fear is absurd.

{mospagebreak}Peggy Cochran, a former executive director of the Missouri chapter of the National Education Association, a 3.2 million-member teachers’ union, also said racial bias has made some teachers slow to back Obama.

Cochran, a Clinton delegate who is charged with whipping Clinton’s other delegates from Missouri, said that Obama has met resistance from her union members.

“We hope to move them [into Obama’s camp],” she said. “There are various and assorted reasons why they are slow to move.”

{mosads}“I think there’s a bias, a racial bias,” she said. “For some, there’s a bias for [Obama’s] youth.”

Obama, whose father was African, turned 47 at the beginning of August.

Ackerman said that the AFL-CIO strategists believe they can win wavering union members over to Obama by emphasizing his support of working-class issues and painting McCain as out of touch with their concerns.

“Economic issues are dominant, and that’s what we talk about,” she said.

The union sent out a mail piece to 1 million union voters in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania this week stressing Obama’s work in both the Illinois and U.S. Senate to cut taxes for the middle class and extend healthcare benefits for wounded veterans.

In an apparent effort to embarrass union members into voting for the Democrat, Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO’s secretary-treasurer, for months has warned that union members might vote against Obama because of his race.

“There’s not a single good reason for any worker — especially any union member — to vote against Barack Obama,” he told members of the United Steelworkers union earlier this summer.

“There’s only one really bad reason to vote against him: because he’s not white,” said Trumka, who made similar remarks on Sunday in Denver.

Despite the leadership of senior AFL-CIO officials, a significant number of members in the middle and lower ranks of unions that endorsed Clinton have been slow to back Obama, said a senior union official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“There’s been some reluctance on the part of a couple of unions,” said the official, who cited unionized teachers and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

The machinists’ union endorsed Clinton and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) during the Democratic and Republican primaries.