Ear­li­er this month, when thou­sands of union mem­bers gath­ered in Philadel­phia for the AFL-CIO’s ​“Work­ers Stand for Amer­i­ca” ral­ly, labor lead­ers tried to pull off a dif­fi­cult bal­anc­ing act: fir­ing up a weary, embat­tled labor move­ment while pre­sent­ing an endorse­ment of Barack Oba­ma as the less­er of two evils.

"A worker voting for Mitt Romney is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders," says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

Out of fear of the Repub­li­cans’ all-out war on unions, labor lead­ers found them­selves in the awk­ward posi­tion of hav­ing to cham­pi­on the reelec­tion of Oba­ma, whose actions toward orga­nized labor have ranged from indif­fer­ent to hos­tile. Tout­ing Oba­ma at the August 11 ral­ly posed addi­tion­al dif­fi­cul­ties because the event had been ini­tial­ly seen as a sort of ​“shad­ow con­ven­tion” in protest of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion being held in heav­i­ly anti-union North Carolina.

At moments, the ral­ly felt like a church revival, with peo­ple singing labor’s prais­es; at oth­ers, the sense of siege was oppressive.

Road rage

The day kicked off with an open­ing ral­ly of approx­i­mate­ly 1,000 Ver­i­zon work­ers, mem­bers of the Inter­na­tion­al Broth­er­hood of Elec­tri­cal Work­ers (IBEW) and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers of Amer­i­ca (CWA). Both unions are mak­ing very seri­ous noise about going out on strike after Ver­i­zon has refused to budge at the bar­gain­ing table for near­ly 15 months. CWA Dis­trict 1 Vice Pres­i­dent Chris Shel­ton read off the names of 37 Ver­i­zon strik­ers who were fired–the union claims ille­gal­ly – in the midst of a three-week Ver­i­zon strike last August. Union leader after union leader came onstage to exhort the work­ers to redou­ble their fight against Ver­i­zon for the sake of the casu­al­ties already suffered.

​“They are mak­ing exam­ple of the 37 Ver­i­zon work­ers … but we need to make an exam­ple of them,” shout­ed an emo­tion­al CWA Pres­i­dent Lar­ry Cohen.

Fired up by Cohen’s saber-rat­tling, the work­ers surged into the street for a march to Eakins Oval, near­ly a mile away. The chant­i­ng work­ers received honks of sup­port. A postal work­er stopped his truck, got out, and told the work­ers how much he sup­ports what they are doing.

A few blocks lat­er, how­ev­er, they began to encounter some of oth­er atti­tudes the pub­lic holds toward the labor move­ment, rang­ing from indif­fer­ence to ani­mos­i­ty. As traf­fic stalled, frus­trat­ed dri­vers yelled at the marchers to get out of the way. At one cross street, a thir­tysome­thing climbed out of his car and shout­ed, ​“You ass­holes bitch­ing about your jobs are stop­ping me from get­ting to my job,” gave the marchers the fin­ger, and went on, ​“Oh you cry­ba­bies, pay for your health­care like every­one else.” Sev­er­al work­ers shout­ed back, but moved on.

At sev­er­al inter­sec­tions, streams of cars began to suc­ceed in break­ing through, dis­rupt­ing the march. Even­tu­al­ly, some of the marchers began to tire, and a few divert­ed into a near­by bar.

But when they reached the plaza to join the 35,000-person crowd, the sense of siege began to lift. The riv­er of red Ver­i­zon shirts merged into a sea of blue AFT shirts and green TWU signs. Every­thing was okay; labor was back together.

AFL-CIO Pres­i­dent Richard Trum­ka addressed the assem­bled work­ers, to cheers: ​“Any­one who says that we have to down­size the Amer­i­can Dream doesn’t know what this coun­try is all about, and they bet­ter get out of our way cause we are going to run up their chest, tap dance on their head, and run down their back.”

Trum­ka announced the launch of a new AFL-CIO polit­i­cal pro­gram called the Sec­ond Bill of Rights (echo­ing FDR’s famous 1944 call for Amer­i­ca to ensure its cit­i­zens addi­tion­al rights not spec­i­fied in the con­sti­tu­tion, such as edu­ca­tion, employ­ment, food and cloth­ing). The AFL-CIO bill advo­cates the right to a job at a liv­ing wage, the right to full par­tic­i­pa­tion in the elec­toral sys­tem, the right to col­lec­tive­ly bar­gain, the right to a qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion, and the rights to health care, retire­ment secu­ri­ty and unem­ploy­ment insurance.

A bit­ter pill

Trum­ka still had a tough sell ahead: AFL-CIO’s endorse­ment of Oba­ma. Many in orga­nized labor fault Oba­ma for open­ing the attacks on pub­lic sec­tor work­ers. In a famous speech at the His­pan­ic Cham­ber of Com­merce in 2009, the pres­i­dent called for the get­ting rid of ​“bad teach­ers”; the next year, he endorsed the mass fir­ing of union­ized teach­ers in Cen­tral Falls, Rhode Island. Cam­paign for Amer­i­ca’s Future Co-Pres­i­dent Bob Borosage has likened Oba­ma’s deci­sion to freeze the pay of fed­er­al work­ers to Rea­gan’s dev­as­tat­ing 1981 break-up of the air traf­fic con­trollers’ strike, which opened the door for more demands for cuts from oth­er work­ers. Most recent­ly, the pres­i­dent signed a bill in Feb­ru­ary mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult for air­line work­ers to union­ize, which result­ed in an unprece­dent­ed anti-union rul­ing by a fed­er­al dis­trict court that blocked 10,000 Amer­i­can Air­lines cus­tomer ser­vice agents from hold­ing an elec­tion.

More­over, the ral­ly was ini­tial­ly seen by many as a protest of the DNC, a notion that par­tic­i­pat­ing unions had attempt­ed to dis­pel . Union mem­bers were upset that the Democ­rats chose to hold their con­ven­tion in Char­lotte, N.C., a right-to-work state with the low­est union den­si­ty of any in the coun­try (2.9 per­cent). North Car­oli­na also has in place a law dat­ing from the Jim-Crow era that denies pub­lic employ­ees the right to col­lec­tive­ly bar­gain. The law, which has been con­demned by the UN’s Inter­na­tion­al Labor Orga­ni­za­tion, for­bids union dues from being vol­un­tar­i­ly deduct­ed from pub­lic employ­ees’ pay­checks. Its effect is sim­i­lar to one of the most con­tro­ver­sial pro­vi­sions of Scott Walker’s anti-union bill, which a fed­er­al judge recent­ly ruled uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under the First and Four­teenth Amendments.

In advance of the DNC, pub­lic-sec­tor work­ers in Charlotte’s Unit­ed Elec­tri­cal, Radio and Machine Work­ers of Amer­i­ca (UE) Local 150 are cam­paign­ing to get May­or Antho­ny Foxx to help Charlotte’s pub­lic work­ers gain union rep­re­sen­ta­tion. (Full dis­clo­sure: My dad, Gene Elk, is an inter­na­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the UE). The UE says that non-union san­i­ta­tion work­ers in Char­lotte are already being forced to work dan­ger­ous amounts of manda­to­ry over­time in order to pre­pare for the con­ven­tion. In con­trast, the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion is being held in Tam­pa, Fla., where pub­lic employ­ees who are help­ing put togeth­er the con­ven­tion do have col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights.

Democ­rats take the stage

Ear­li­er in the day, lead­ers were giv­en an unex­pect­ed sweet­en­er to help labor swal­low the Oba­ma endorse­ment: Mitt Rom­ney’s announce­ment that Paul Ryan would be his vice-pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee. AFL-CIO Sec­re­tary Trea­sur­ers Liz Shuler told me that she thought Ryan was ​“a gift” to the labor move­ment in help­ing make the case for Oba­ma. Polls have shown that Oba­ma has had trou­bling appeal­ing to one of labor’s key con­stituen­cies – white work­ing-class men – but it appears Ryan could be the cat­a­lyst. As labor leader after labor leader blast­ed Paul Ryan for want­i­ng to pri­va­tize Medicare, the crowd erupt­ed into boos.

None oth­er than Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee Chair Deb­bie Wasser­man-Schultz showed up to the ral­ly to reaf­firm Democ­rats’ sup­port for orga­nized labor.

​“Pres­i­dent Oba­ma under­stands that gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­cans have orga­nized and pick­et­ed,” said Wasser­man-Schultz in a speech. ​“Today is the birth­place of a Sec­ond Bill of Rights for all of Amer­i­ca’s work­ers.” Wasser­man-Schultz bragged that she her­self is a union mem­ber: an hon­orary mem­ber of the Flori­da Build­ing Trades Council.

I caught up with Wasser­man-Schultz after­ward to ask whether she believes Char­lotte pub­lic sec­tor work­ers should have the right to vol­un­tar­i­ly have union dues deduct­ed from their pay­check. Wasser­man-Schultz dodged the ques­tion, say­ing, ​“What I know is that Democ­rats are thrilled and excit­ed about mak­ing sure that we put on the most open, acces­si­ble Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion of any polit­i­cal con­ven­tion in Amer­i­can his­to­ry and that we have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make sure for America’s work­ers that they have oppor­tu­ni­ty to be a part of the Amer­i­can Dream.”

She con­tin­ued, ​“Barack Oba­ma believes that every­one in Amer­i­ca should have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to be suc­cess­ful. Mitt Rom­ney and Paul Ryan think that mil­lion­aires and bil­lion­aires and the trick­le­down eco­nom­ics and the failed poli­cies of the past are the way to go.”

I found it iron­ic that Wasser­man-Schultz, who spoke for the AFL-CIO’s Sec­ond Bill of Rights, would­n’t answer whether she agreed work­ers deserved some of the rights out­lined in the orig­i­nal Bill of Rights. So lat­er, I asked Wasser­mann-Schultz again to give a yes-or-no answer about whether Char­lotte work­ers deserved vol­un­tary dues deduc­tion. She left the press scrum and walked away from the briefing.

A UAW mem­ber writ­ing for a union pub­li­ca­tion took me aside and told me he was unhap­py with my ques­tion. ​“What, are you a reporter from the Nation­al Right to Work Com­mit­tee?” I informed him that I was a mem­ber of the News­pa­per Guild (TNG-CWA) and that I was a labor reporter for a pro-union pub­li­ca­tion. The UAW work­er said he agrees with me that what the may­or of Char­lotte was doing was wrong, but then chid­ed me for ask­ing Wasser­mann-Schultz a ​“pigeon­holed question.”

These are not the kind of ques­tions that orga­nized labor wants asked of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

Is labor a chicken?

Clear­ly, orga­nized labor is will­ing to shut up and sup­port the Democ­rats. Ener­gized by the ral­ly, rank-and-fil­ers appear will­ing to go along, despite being luke­warm on Oba­ma. ​“I did­n’t think the ral­ly was going to be any­thing more than a pep ral­ly – than a ral­ly the troops kind of thing. But I thought it was great,” says Ver­i­zon work­er and IBEW Local 824 mem­ber Nor­wood Orrick who trav­eled up from Tam­pa, Flori­da to attend.

​“Our deci­sion to go with Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is more about who else are we going to go with?” Orrick con­tin­ues. ​“I am luke­warm on him because he has­n’t be a friend of orga­nized labor. … I think Oba­ma and the Democ­rats in gen­er­al could have done much more. They could have even had the con­ven­tion some­where out­side of Char­lotte, which is kind of a poke in our eye. There is the fed­er­al pay freeze. He cer­tain­ly seems ambiva­lent about the whole thing [regard­ing pub­lic sec­tor employ­ees] at best. I think we need to rock the boat a lit­tle more with him. We need to get him out of his cage and make him pay more atten­tion to us like some oth­er activist groups have done. Hope­ful­ly we will go that route once we get him elected.”

In tune with this sen­ti­ment, AFL-CIO Pres­i­dent Richard Trum­ka sold the Sec­ond Bill of Rights as a tool both to elect Oba­ma and to apply post-elec­tion pres­sure: ​“We are going to use it to edu­cate with, we are going to use it mobi­lize with, we are going to use it to get out the vote. We are going to use it after the elec­tion to try to change this econ­o­my so that it real­ly does work for everybody.”

Behind closed doors, many lead­ers agree with the assess­ment that Mitt Rom­ney is a bul­let to the head for orga­nized labor while Oba­ma will con­tin­ue to be a slow bleed. For now, though, the short-term strug­gle to defeat Rom­ney feels like a fight for survival.

​“A work­er vot­ing for Mitt Rom­ney is like a chick­en vot­ing for Colonel Sanders,” says Trumka.

For now, orga­nized labor is hop­ing that Oba­ma’s taste for chick­en isn’t as strong as Romney’s.

Cor­rec­tion: The esti­mat­ed turnout at the Ver­i­zon ral­ly has been amend­ed from 5,000 to 1,000.