Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders host­ed a nation­al phone call Wednes­day night focused on the labor move­ment in which orga­niz­ers say 26,000 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed. The cam­paign hopes to drum up sup­port from union mem­bers as Sanders inch­es his way to front-run­ner sta­tus in the ear­ly Pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry and cau­cus elec­tions of New Hamp­shire and Iowa.

Orga­nized by Labor for Bernie, the net­work for union mem­bers aim­ing to secure endorse­ments for Sanders, the call fea­tured remarks by Sanders out­lin­ing his eco­nom­ic platform.

“How does it hap­pen that we con­tin­ue to be in a sit­u­a­tion where mil­lions of Amer­i­can work­er want to join unions, want to be involved in col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, they want to stand up for their rights, but they can’t join the union because their employ­ers use unfair, ille­gal tac­tics to deny them their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to form a union?” Sanders asked before announc­ing that he will be intro­duc­ing the Work­place Democ­ra­cy Act into leg­is­la­tion this fall in order to sig­nif­i­cant­ly ease up union dri­ve efforts and sub­se­quent first con­tract implementation.

“This exists in oth­er coun­tries, and we all know that one of the rea­sons that the Amer­i­can mid­dle class is dis­ap­pear­ing is because we have seen a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in the num­ber of peo­ple who are in trade unions in this country.”

Some activist rank-and-file union mem­bers through­out the coun­try have labeled Sanders as the only viable can­di­date for work­ers and, with Labor for Bernie, are attempt­ing to upset an endorse­ment process that has thus far — in the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers and the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Machin­ists and Aero­space Work­ers —favored his oppo­nent Hillary Clin­ton ear­ly on.

“We need some­one who won’t give us any more false promis­es. We need a war­rior in the White House. Bernie Sanders is that war­rior,” says Roseanne DeMoro, pres­i­dent of the pro­gres­sive Nation­al Nurs­es Union, who spoke about her union’s endorse­ment for Sanders, mak­ing them the first major union to endorse the can­di­date thus far. ​“The Nation­al Nurs­es Union so proud­ly endorsed Bernie the first minute that we could. We know and we trust who Bernie is.”

Oth­er union mem­bers who spoke on the call advo­cat­ing for Sanders includ­ed Amal­ga­mat­ed Tran­sit Union inter­na­tion­al pres­i­dent Lar­ry Han­ley and sup­port­ers from the Inter­na­tion­al Broth­er­hood of Elec­tri­cal Work­ers Local 153 and 1199 Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union.

SEIU mem­bers involved with Bernie Sanders fear that their union will be labor’s next major play­er to endorse Clin­ton with­out much input from the rank and file, with a deci­sion expect­ed for late Sep­tem­ber. SEIU for Bernie, a Labor for Bernie affil­i­at­ed group, has col­lect­ed hun­dreds of sig­na­tures in a peti­tion to push SEIU lead­ers to stave off any endorse­ment, but the union has recent­ly told Politi­co that inter­nal polls shore up Clin­ton as the mem­bers’ preference.

At IBEW, a dif­fer­ent kind of endorse­ment process is being under­tak­en, and as Carl Shaf­fer of IBEW Local 153 puts it, Sanders sup­port­ers with­in the union are mak­ing their voice heard, telling call par­tic­i­pants of their mass email to IBEW’s polit­i­cal depart­ment, a con­cert­ed effort hop­ing to delay­ing any deci­sion until after pri­ma­ry sea­son has actu­al­ly unfolded.

“So many IBEW mem­bers took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to express their views to the inter­na­tion­al pres­i­dent that he respond­ed a lit­tle over a week lat­er to all of them on August 28, say­ing that IBEW had no inten­tion of mak­ing an ear­ly endorse­ment. He fin­ished his state­ment by encour­ag­ing all IBEW mem­bers to become involved in the grass­roots polit­i­cal efforts and to study the can­di­dates’ posi­tions on the issues,” Shaf­fer says.

Anoth­er par­tic­i­pant in the call was Adolph Reed, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor and long­time writer and activist, with an orga­niz­ing report from the South where he says he has been draw­ing inter­est for Sanders’ cam­paign from stu­dents and fac­ul­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Orleans, Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty, and his­tor­i­cal­ly black col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties through­out the region. Reed also stat­ed that he is con­sid­er­ing form­ing a group called Nation­al Aca­d­e­mics for Sanders.

Sanders’ call to union mem­bers Wednes­day night enabled Labor for Bernie to bring in thou­sands of vol­un­teers, accord­ing one of the group’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives Lar­ry Cohen, the for­mer pres­i­dent of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers of America.

As Sanders made clear dur­ing his remarks, these vol­un­teers should be cru­cial to his cam­paign: ​“No pres­i­dent can bring about the changes we need in the pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics of this coun­try — no pres­i­dent can do it alone. We need a polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion, we need mil­lions of peo­ple to be involved in the process and the trade union move­ment has got to be in the mid­dle of that.”