By Sean O’Brien, Wayne Academic Union (WAU AFT-AAUP Local #6075)
Higher ed unions were activated after HELU’s Michigan Senate Candidate Town Hall. After personally interacting with several candidates, each of whom presented a clear vision for higher education and labor, local unions wanted to get involved. Wayne Academic Union was not alone in this. It started an internal conversation about how, who, and what our union’s endorsement would mean. While we ultimately endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, the process wasn’t a foregone conclusion.
The endorsement process in Michigan is tricky. There are internal mechanisms to the labor movement housed within the Michigan AFL-CIO to determine endorsements. Locals work within their state federations and their state federations work within the AFL-CIO for a democratic process. Yet, when one local endorses independently, outside of that process, other locals tend to follow suit. And that happened here. Non-higher education locals began announcing endorsements for the Senate candidates and unfortunately, these endorsements didn’t align with the needs of higher education. On one hand, AFT Michigan, our state federation, was trying to determine their position for the endorsement votes within the Michigan AFL-CIO and on the other, our local wanted to be involved directly. Wayne Academic Union wouldn’t sit on the sidelines while unions jumped in.
We needed a democratic process. We put together a small Political Task Force that developed a questionnaire to send out candidates running in every election in a district in which our members lived. The questions focused primarily on higher education working conditions such as affordability and academic freedom. Up to this point, our Political Task Force members had mixed individual preferences. Discussions during coffee about how the union should proceed were intense. Rather than push personal preferences, we relied on the questionnaire as a carefully negotiated middle ground that allowed us to abstain from weighing in on who we liked or who lined up with any one committee member’s views. We ranked every candidate’s answers that responded. We presented the candidates who scored highest in each race to Wayne Academic Union’s executive board and asked for an endorsement. WAU endorsed. For the Senate race, endorsing Abdul El-Sayed matched the preferences that emerged from HELU’s Michigan Senate Town Hall. That probably wasn’t an accident. Candidates were given a space to think about and articulate positions on higher education labor early enough in their race to matter. Those views were refined by the time our questionnaire went out.
Michigan AFT endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, too. And then, AAUP made its historic endorsement of Abdul. Their first political endorsement in 111 years. To do this, Michigan AAUP locals made it clear they were interested in this race. President Todd Wolfson and other AAUP leaders convened an all-members meeting in Michigan to discuss what endorsing any candidate in any race would mean. And we voted. The vote to endorse was separate from the vote on which candidate to endorse. Once it was clear the organization felt nearly unanimous about jumping into this election, the debate began regarding who to endorse. Again, Abdul was clearly favored in a poll sent to everyone who attended the meeting. Abdul El-Sayed earned a historical political endorsement because his articulation on the crisis of contingency, the affordability of college, the critical importance of academic freedom and Medicare for All resonated with activists across Michigan. The process was democratic to its core.
And it started with the Senate Town Hall hosted by HELU’s Michigan group. Leaders such as Daniel Birchok, Anke Wolbert, Víctor Rodríguez-Pereira, Penni Toney, and Hayg Oshagan ensured a member-first driven process that resonated throughout AFT Michigan and AAUP National. WAU’s Political Task Force is continuing to be involved in the election season and supporting our endorsed candidates. We will be mobilizing members to door knock, hosting fundraising events, and bringing our candidates to campus to meet with members and discuss their concerns and hopes directly. The primary was just the warm up. WAU is in it until the end.
Other locals should be, too. After all, organized labor is the backbone of democracy.