Unions talk directly to members about Obama, race

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Not long after Sen. Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination for president, union bosses for the building trades realized they needed to better understand their members' complicated views of the Illinois senator.They commissioned a study by Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman and Penn State professor Jerry Olson, who have developed a method to understand consumers' subconscious decision-making.Researchers asked 15 Pittsburgh-area workers in the building trades, all white men over 35 who were leaning toward Republican Sen. John McCain or undecided, to sit down for one-on-one interviews lasting several hours.They shared a sense that everything they had assimilated in their cultural upbringings was changing before them, said Tom Owens, spokesman for the National Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO.For the most part, the responses were not overtly racist, Owens said. But they revealed anxiety that union leaders worry could become an election wild card."They're nervous and scared and uneasy," Owens said. "They live in a multiethnic society and see the culture their father and grandfathers had, the tight knit culture, all of it slipping away. Hip-hop music is everywhere and they don't understand it. It fills them with a kind of trepidation. They understand Obama is with them on the issues. He stands up and protects unions. But then there's that little element a lot of them had in the back of their minds: Is Barack Obama going to be the president for black America and not white America?"The results were troubling to Building Trades President Mark Ayers and other labor leaders who have backed Obama over McCain and hoped their members follow. While Obama's campaign has been mostly reticent to call attention to the racial dynamics of the race for fear of polarizing voters, union leaders are confronting the topic by talking directly to members.To win, Obama needs them.Nationally, 15.4 million workers belong to unions, and 73 percent of them are white. The AFL-CIO Building Trades represents a workforce of 2.5 million.Concluding that Obama's skin color could be a factor for a fraction of those members, union heads have rushed to send out videos, print materials and talking points to send the message that despite misgivings, Obama is the far better choice for those concerned about their jobs, health care and retirement savings. The AFL-CIO is spending $53.4 million on its grass-roots mobilization to persuade members to come out for Obama.Some of those messages are very direct when it comes to race.One video, distributed by the Building Trades to union locals nationwide, features a white painter from Chicago who knows Obama. Using a metaphor, he tells viewers that a patient struggling with a heart ailment isn't going to care about the color of his doctor's skin. He just wants the best doctor. Right now, the worker says, Washington needs a heart transplant."We have to take it head-on and get it on the table," Ayers said last week in an interview."Some of our members, if you ask them the problem with Obama, they'll say he doesn't wear an American flag pin (on his) lapel. And the answer is that's not true," Ayers said. "When you get right down to it they'll tell you quietly that some of them don't support Obama because he's black."AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka made similar comments in July at a United Steelworkers convention in Las Vegas.Trumka recalled how race had been used in the past by companies to divide workers. "A lot of good union people just can't get past the idea that there's something wrong with voting for a black man. Well, those of us who know better can't afford to look the other way," Trumka said. "(There's) no evil that's inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism - and it's something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge."He noted that industrial unions have stood up against lynching and racism, and that outside the military the labor movement is "the most integrated institution in American life."Polls indicate Obama's support is slipping among working-class white voters. In June, McCain led the group by 6 percentage points. He now leads working-class whites by 20 percentage points, according to a Pew Center poll conducted last month.The role of racism in the election is still a question. According to a July New York Times/CBS poll, 5 percent of whites said they would be unwilling to vote for a black candidate. In a separate question, 19 percent said most of the people they knew would not vote for a black.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)