Campaign workers’ push to unionize starts to pay off
This story was published as part of a POLITICO Journalism Institute special section. PJI is a journalism training program in partnership with American University and the Maynard Institute, that allows student participants to report and produce news stories.
The decision this week by Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 team to form a union — the fourth presidential campaign to do so — highlights how a little-noticed effort by a group of campaign workers to secure better hours and pay is starting to pay off.
The Campaign Workers Guild formed near the end of 2017 to help staffers across the country bargain for higher compensation, better health insurance and stronger policies for sexual harassment. The organization said it has since helped to organize and create collective bargaining agreements for about 30 campaigns, including one in progress with presidential hopeful Julián Castro’s campaign workers.
While only four of the 23 Democratic presidential campaigns have so far said they will unionize, Meg Reilly, president of the Campaign Workers Guild, said others are showing interest.
“There are a lot of presidential campaigns bubbling at various stages of the process … so, it’s not just one or two campaigns. I think there’s quite a few that are interested,” Reilly said.
The Campaign Workers Guild, which has headquarters in Washington, D.C., is a nonpartisan union made up of active and intermittent campaign workers, like Reilly. The group established itself as a national independent union after more established unions turned them away, Reilly said. It signed its first contract in December 2017 with the campaign staff of Wisconsin Democrat Randy Bryce, who was challenging House Speaker Paul Ryan at the time.
Warren’s campaign unionized with the New Hampshire-based International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2320, not the Campaign Workers Guild. But the group says collective bargaining agreements at the presidential level are creating buzz around the idea of unionizing campaigns, and the Campaign Workers Guild expects to see even more aides banding together to negotiate for better working conditions ahead of the 2020 elections.
“The more campaigns that unionize, the more candidates and campaign management are going to have to accept that this is the new reality,” Reilly said. “They no longer get to brag about having union-printed literature while requiring staff to work 80 hours per week.”
IBEW Local 2320 business manager Steven Soule said the Warren team’s decision should push other Democratic candidates to act.
“I think it also is recognition that the Democratic Party needs to be the party of the working people and speak directly to working issues throughout the country in all of these political campaigns, whether it be presidential or congressional,” he said.
Democrats have long supported organized labor, but unionizing presidential campaigns – for which workers take short-term positions, move frequently, and don’t always make minimum wage – is a new phenomenon. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) campaign became the first presidential campaign to organize in March, forming a union with United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 400. Shortly after, Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D-Calif.) campaign staff also unionized as part of the Teamsters Local 238.
Castro’s team is working with the Campaign Workers Guild to form a contract for its union.
“They’re a coalition of former campaign staffers, so they have a pretty unique understanding and perspective on what the challenges that campaign staffers face,” said Sawyer Hackett, Castro’s national press secretary. For the workers, “it just sort of made perfect sense that [CWG] were the ones to help us get this campaign recognized.”
Other candidates, including former Vice President Joe Biden, who locked in an endorsement by the International Association of Fire Fighters when he launched his campaign, have not announced any union representation for their campaign staff.
“It’s hard when you work in this industry where the entire ethos of a campaign is ‘win win win,’ ‘do nothing to jeopardize winning,’” said Ihaab Syed, an associate member of the Campaign Workers Guild. “Jeopardizing winning can be interpreted to mean something as simple as saying, ‘Hey, I want a raise.’”
Reilly said candidates — whether they are Democrats or Republicans — should pay attention to the needs of their staff.
“For a candidate to voluntarily recognize their workers is to say, ‘I see you, I recognize you, I’m not going to dispute that you have a majority of cards,’” she said. “And I think it’s a smart, calculated move on their part.”