Sometimes when you put your money where your mouth is, you get bit.
That’s what appears to be happening in North Carolina, where state Democratic Party staff members voted to unionize just after the first of the year — and, in August, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ratified its first collective bargaining agreement with the new union.
“We hope this contract will serve as a model to the Democratic ecosystem for what is possible,” DCCC Union spokesman Reed Elman Wexham told Axios at the time.
Now, two weeks from Election Day, 2022, that union’s negotiations with the North Carolina Democratic Party have apparently reached an impasse. The union hasn’t exactly threatened a strike … but it hasn’t exactly not threatened a strike, either.
A Twitter account named for, and apparently run by, the North Carolina Democratic Party Field Staff Union posted a five-tweet thread on Sunday that said, among other things, “We will not accept this dramatic cut in our compensation, and we will not accept a contract without fair pay.”
.@NCDemParty remember: this campaign cannot run without us. We deserve a fair contract. (5/5)
— NCDP Field Staff Union (@NCDemsUnite) October 23, 2022
The following tweet tagged the NCDP and appeared to offer a threat: “@NCDemParty remember: this campaign cannot run without us. We deserve a fair contract.”
I’m not sure that qualifies as a threat, but it seems like the kind of thing a negotiator would say, and then the negotiator for the other side would say, “Was that a threat?”
Was recognizing this union a good idea for the North Carolina Democratic Party?
“I’m just pointing out the obvious,” the first negotiator would then reply.
The Western Journal has been unable to verify that the NCDP Field Staff Union Twitter account is authorized to speak on behalf of the union. We also reached out to both parties for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
The NCDP, however, is a verified account. It also posted on Sunday evening regarding this issue, which would appear to lend credibility to the other.
— NC Democratic Party (@NCDemParty) October 24, 2022
That said, this is the first tweet thread on the Field Staff Union account since a retweet in August, 2020, of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The fact that she’s the last person retweeted on this account is enough on its own to make me think the account really does represent the union, and, if so, this being their first new tweet thread in years tells me they might be pretty serious about this threat.
The fact that they’ve failed to tweet a single supportive message about any of their party’s candidates says something, too, about where their loyalties lie: with themselves. The fact that this tweet thread went out while early voting was already underway and 16 days prior to Election Day sends the same message.
That’s not surprising. In fact, it’s more or less what two GOP strategists predicted would happen back in August.
Creating campaign-worker unions was “likely going to cause them to spend more on staffing and operational expenses, and [cause] internal delays due to negotiations,” Republican strategist Brian O. Walsh told Axios at the time.
Republican National Committee senior adviser Richard Walters also appeared to be in favor of the change. “We applaud the DCCC rendering themselves even more useless,” he told Axios. “Perhaps they’ll offer tenure next.”
As Axios summarized the concerns: “Campaigns are all about working long hours for low pay. In a candid conversation, most Democratic operatives would tell you they’re pro-union, but they’d question the efficacy of it for a campaign.”
But if you’re a Democratic Party mucky-muck, how are you going to work against unionizing your own campaign workers and retain any credibility? You have to put your money where your mouth is, right?
And sometimes when you do that, you get bit.
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