PAN Helps Build Working America
How can the union movement recruit nearly 1,000,000 new members in 18 months? Go door-to-door, of course.
That’s what the AFL-CIO needed to do in 2003. They did it with a program called Working America. PAN played a major role in that success and continues to work with Working America to build on that success. Currently, PAN manages canvasses for Working America in Columbus, OH, Kansas City, St. Louis, Portland, OR, Rochester, MN and The Twin Cities, MN.
Working America offers a kind of “associate” union membership to working people who don’t have a union in their workplace. It’s a way to reach people who may agree with the goals of the union movement but don’t have any way to take part — in other words, most people.
Working America communicates with non-union American working people about things that affect their interests, like off-shoring of jobs, rising health care costs, and corporate power and corruption. Members who have Internet access get about one e-mail a week from Working America, and those who don’t get the organization’s print newsletter about three times a year.
Three quarters of members are working class conservatives and moderates. Two out of five come from union households or were once union members. Many have lost their connection to the labor movement through no fault of their own — they were laid off, or cannot find the union jobs that their parents once had. They value the union movement and want to maintain a connection with it.
Those members who canvassers identify as particularly interested may later be recruited as activists or volunteers. Executive Director of Working America, Karen Nussbaum said that in 2004’s union electoral effort in one city, as many as half of the union volunteers were members of Working America.
In the 2004 presidential campaign, Working America members responded to the information the group sent. 68% ended up voting for John Kerry. Take a look at just two groups for the sake of comparison: white men in the public at large voted 38% for Kerry, but white men who were Working America members voted 59% for Kerry; among moderates, the vote for Kerry was 30% among the public at large and 67% of Working America members.
PAN looks forward to continuing to build Working America to empower working people.