LABOR BOSSES FEAR TRUMP
Labor Fears Partisan Defections Toward Donald Trump
Union leaders mobilize to try to counteract the Republican’s appeal to the white working class
Labor leaders are nervous about Donald Trump’s appeal to unions’ many white, working-class members, and they are working to head off partisan defections.
Unions spend heavily to support Democrats in elections and wield great influence over whether their members support those candidates. But labor leaders fear many of their members could be drawn to Mr. Trump. Merged Wall Street Journal/NBC News polling data from the first four months of the year show that among white union households, support is split evenly between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton, at 44% each, in a potential general-election matchup.
“Everybody recognizes the enormous threat Trump poses” whether their unions have backed either Democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders or Mrs. Clinton, said Robert Master, the Eastern region political director for the Communications Workers of America, which has endorsed Mr. Sanders. “There’s an element in that right-wing populism that is appealing to some of our members, there’s no question about that,” Mr. Master said.
The AFL-CIO is preparing an education campaign to highlight some of Mr. Trump’s statements—such as that wages are too high—and lesser-known things about how he has run his businesses and treated employees, said Mike Podhorzer, political director of the nation’s largest federation of labor unions.
Last week, the AFL-CIO began its on-the-ground program in battleground states including Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Nevada. It is distributing fliers at members’ workplaces and homes and is making them available to its affiliate unions and local chapters in every state.
Part of the campaign is rooted in a round of focus groups the AFL-CIO conducted in recent weeks in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati—both cities in states where the percentage of workers in unions outstrips the national rate of 11.1%. The groups consisted of union members who weren’t strongly for Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton but were considering voting for the Republican. Most participants were registered as independents.
When the participants learned things about Mr. Trump, such as his support for so-called right-to-work laws that can weaken unions, “it changed the prism that they were looking at the election through, from being this popular entertainment game show to ‘this is really going to affect my life,’ ” Mr. Podhorzer said.
The group’s fliers also accuse the Republican of hypocrisy for producing products overseas even while he vows to protect American jobs.
Mr. Trump has more recently voiced support for raising the minimum wage, and Corey Lewandowski, his campaign manager, said Mrs. Clinton and her labor supporters are out of step with working-class voters. Mrs. Clinton “is 100% owned by Wall Street special interests, meaning she won’t do anything to help union workers,” Mr. Lewandowski said.
In many ways, unions’ membership rolls represent the sweet spot of Mr. Trump’s coalition. Last year, about three-fourths of the nation’s 14.8 million union members were white, and more than half of those were men, according to the Labor Department. The white members earned a median wage of $1,007 a week for full-time work, the equivalent of $52,364 a year, putting them near the annual average wage of $48,320 for U.S. workers in May of last year, Labor Department data show.
According to the AFL-CIO, 39% of white workers who belong to its dozens of member unions have some sort of post-high school degree, which means the majority share a common trait of many Trump supporters—no college education.
More than half of the collective membership in AFL-CIO unions identify as Democrat, while about one-third identify as Republican and the rest as independent. The latter group is the one organized labor is most concerned about.
Republicans say Mr. Trump’s appeal with union voters could potentially allow him to replicate the campaign that helped elect former President Ronald Reagan.
“Trump appeals to union membership like the Teamsters and should be able to put together a modern-day Reagan Democrat coalition,” said Scott Reed, a Republican campaign strategist.
Union leaders say they are concerned that Mrs. Clinton’s lead in national polls over Mr. Trump has been narrowing, but they note that she hasn’t had a chance to consolidate Democrats. While she has won the vast majority of union endorsements, Mr. Sanders has ardent support from some of the more left-leaning unions, giving Mr. Trump an opening to attack her by saying “she can’t close the deal.”
“Trump has somewhat outflanked Hillary by making a case that he is the one who is for the true Democratic base,” said Larry Hanley, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which has endorsed Mr. Sanders.
Other labor officials play down the ultimate threat of Mr. Trump.
“The union vote will be as strong as it’s ever been,” said Steve Rosenthal, a political strategist for unions. “Fear is a mighty powerful motivator.”
A possible weak spot for Mrs. Clinton in a matchup with Mr. Trump is on trade.
There is some lingering resentment among union members that she voiced support for the North American Free Trade Agreement when she was first lady, and while Mrs. Clinton has come out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, she has voiced support for it in the past.
Mr. Trump has rejected the TPP and criticized past trade agreements generally.
How Trump Happened
So far, the AFL-CIO and its president, Richard Trumka, have been the main forces taking jabs at Mr. Trump. The federation was running anti-Trump digital ads, sending anti-Trump texts to members and speaking out against Mr. Trump months ago.
The AFL-CIO’s community affiliate group, Working America, an organization for non-union people, has conducted what it calls “front porch focus groups” about Mr. Trump with some of its members and others. For five weeks through mid-January, canvassers visited nearly 1,700 likely voters with household incomes of $75,000 or less in white, working-class areas near Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
While many Republicans who had decided on a candidate told canvassers they were behind Mr. Trump, one in four Democrats who had decided showed a preference for him, too.
The canvassers were encouraged, however, that personality was far more important than issues among Trump supporters, with nearly half saying they liked him because he “speaks his mind,” the group said in a report.
“What we found is if we had longer conversations with them that layered on different approaches, we could move people” away from him, said Karen Nussbaum, Working America’s executive director.
Write to Melanie Trottman at melanie.trottman@wsj.com and Brody Mullins at brody.mullins@wsj.com
