POLITICAL ADVOCACY AND ENDORSEMENT

Endorsement ProcessHow Affiliates Can Get Involved

Our Political Priorities

Jobs with a Future

The new economic realities of our world-leading region requires better-trained and more skilled workers than ever before. We believe business, unions, educators and neighborhood groups can work together to create new and better training opportunities. It's also up to employers to honor the skills and productivity of of the workforce by offering the quality wages and benefits area employees have earned.

Keeping Government Accountable

In America, we're not our government's customers, we're it's owners. It's time to require elected officials to clearly demonstrate the economic and social benefit to the community of costly projects they propose. We need to challenge the city to ensure that we are of the return on investment to the community following the investment of our tax dollars in development.

Healthier Families

In Santa Clara County we made history by becoming the first county in America to offer affordable healthcare for every child. Now it's time to explore the next step: seeing that every adult, regardless of income, is able to gain access to the healthcare they need.

Affordable Housing

Today, too many workers, even lifelong residents, are unable to afford the cost of renting an apartment, let alone a home mortgage. We're convinced that, by joining forces, government and business can create the affordable new housing we need, while protecting the housing we already have.

Caring About Kids

By investing in quality public schools, we ensure that we are giving our children the running start they'll need to succeed. But we can't stop there. We also need to offer educational child care for preschoolers. That means providing the training and compensation it takes to attract and retain childcare professionals.

The Endorsement Process

Endorsements are done by the Labor Council's Committe on Political Education, or COPE. The process is as follows.

STEP 1: CANDIDATE BRIEFING

We realize that not every candidate has a strong understanding of the issues that face today's working families and organized labor. The candidate briefing is designed to familiarize candidates with the political and policy priorities of working families in the Silicon Valley. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about pressing issues from union leaders, rank-and-file members and community leaders--ranging from wage and contract issues to the environment, education, health care and affordable housing.

STEP 2: COPE ENDORSEMENT INTERVIEW

Candidates are invited to participate in a COPE Endorsement Interview. After completing a COPE candidate questionnaire focused on the issues facing today's working families and organized labor, candidates will be interviewed by the COPE Interviewing Committee made up of union members appointed by active major unions in Santa Clara and San Benito Counties. After the interview process an endorsement recommendation will by made by a two-thirds vote of the COPE Interviewing Committee.

STEP 3: ENDORSEMENT

The endorsement recommendation made by the COPE Interviewing Committee is then reviewed and voted on by both the South Bay Labor Council's Executive Board and the delegates of all affiliated unions. If a candidate receives at least a two-thirds vote of both the Executive Board and the delegates, then that candidate is endorsed by COPE.

STEP 4: CAMPAIGN

Once a candidate is endorsed by the South Bay Labor Council's Committee on Political Education, a campaign follows that includes at least one if not all of the following components: direct mail to voters in support of the candidate, door-to-door voter education, voter education via phone, and financial contributions.

How Affiliates Can Get Involved

The Labor Council runs an integrated, year-round campaign to advance the political interests of working families. Linking the labor movement's political outcomes to gaining support for the right to organize lies at the foundation of labor's new political agenda. By incorporating each affiliated union's national state and local priorities into a regional political agenda, the local labor community is working harder to leverage political power for all working families. Through a combination of candidate briefings, endorsement interviews, candidate training, voter contact and legislative action, the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council's political program puts the issues of economic equity front and center in the policy arena.

Promoting the Right to Organize

The South Bay Labor Council has made support for the right to organize the top political priority for our local labor movement. Electing to office candidates who have a zero tolerance policy for union busting is at the foundation to making San Jose a Union City and Santa Clara County a Union Region. Through candidate education and issue briefings, our political program highlights the impotency of national labor law and promotes alternative strategies to bringing about workplace democracy. Candidates committed to using their public stature and lending a moral voice to restoring the right to organize receive our full support.

Candidate Outreach and Education

The need to educate and brief candidates on issues of importance to working families is that much more critical in an era of term limits. Prior to endorsement interviews, candidates can participate in a 2-hour briefing on key policy issues facing working families. Additionally, candidates are briefed on current organizing drives, contract campaigns and social equity policy efforts. Candidates are encouraged to lend their support through a range of activities from letter-writing, and delegation visits to rallying with local workers. Through panel discussions, video and written materials, candidates come away with a comprehensive understanding of the labor movement's policy agenda.

The South Bay Labor Council Campaign Institute

Rank and file labor activists, political campaign staff and candidates receiving labor's endorsement can attend the South Bay Campaign Management Institute. Providing nuts and bolts training on how to run a successful campaign gives our movement and our candidates a leg up in races. The Institute covers topics such as: building a campaign plan, fundraising, building a volunteer pool and volunteer management, roles and responsibilities of campaign staff, and developing a campaign calendar.

Political Endorsements

Through a strategy of coordination and cooperation, local unions screen candidates for political office and make recommendations for endorsements. Candidates receiving the Labor Council's endorsement are supported with the full resources of the Labor Council's voter contact program.

Voter Contact

Our internal education and Get-Out-The-Vote programs mobilize union members to walk precincts and phone bank on behalf of endorsed candidates and ballot initiatives. Through a member-to-member communication program aimed at educating and turning union members out to the polls, labor's endorsement is often the margin of victory in elections.

Work-site Program

By developing work-site leaders, union members are trained to educate co-workers on the job and to enlist them in political activism. Through a combined strategy of reaching out on the job-site, in the workplace and through apprenticeship programs, we continue to generate new activists and expand our volunteer base.

Legislative Action

Bringing elected officials together with union members helps to define labor's up-coming legislative agenda and allows our members to brief officeholders on key issues and up-coming concerns. Regular briefings with elected officials to discuss current issues at the federal, state and local level ensures that working women and men are as much a part of an elected official's governing coalition as they are a part of their electoral one.