As the country’s largest and most prominent labor federation, the AFL-CIO (which is a collection of unions rather than a union itself) commands a lot of attention. Joe Biden did Zoom events with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka as a way to demonstrate his labor bona fides—Biden said he was “labor from belt buckle to shoe sole” at one—and the federation endured criticism for focusing too much on political spending as opposed to organizing.
And yet, the AFL-CIO didn’t spend all that much on elections in 2020. According to Opensecrets, the labor federation's primary campaign organ, Working America, spent $5.2 million in 2020. That's nothing to sneeze at, but it's less than the 2016 figure from Working America ($6.2 million) and substantially less than the $20 million the SEIU spent in 2020.
The AFL-CIO was also among the labor groups that in 2016 launched For Our Future PAC, a joint venture with billionaire mega-donor Tom Steyer. For Our Future arguably didn’t do too well in its first cycle, spending around $50 million in an effort to turn out voters in swing states only to have Donald Trump eke out a close win. In 2018, it contributed to many Democratic wins in the House, but it spent the most on Florida Senator Bill Nelson’s reelection campaign. Despite For Our Future’s $2 million in independent expenditures and its ground game, Republican Rick Scott unseated him.
But For Our Future prides itself on building a “continuous presence” in the Midwest, Arizona, Florida and Virginia, combining face-to-face voter outreach with targeted web ads. As the 2020 cycle heated up, it hired former Obama Florida campaign chair Ashley Walker and vowed to spend $80 to $90 million this year. Those efforts—along with the efforts of many other groups—no doubt helped flip Arizona and the Midwestern "blue wall" states, giving Biden the presidency.
Still, the AFL-CIO is clearly not the biggest force in American labor. In the Trump era, it has laid off staff and pivoted away from organizing to gain more members. The SEIU and public-sector unions are clearly more prominent forces in the labor movement at this point, and that's reflected in 2020 donations.
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