Labor Fine-Tunes Voter Mobilization Work By LEIGH STROPE, AP
The AFL-CIO is organizing neighborhood walks across the country on Sept. 2, coinciding with the day Bush accepts his party's nomination at its New York convention. Union leaders are recruiting 25,000 volunteers with a goal of knocking on 1 million doors, urging people to vote.
Bush meanwhile is taking a swipe at labor on Thursday with a visit to a union training center in Las Vegas. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters, which left the AFL-CIO in 2001, owns the facility and is friendly with the Bush administration, hosting several Labor Day events with the president.
The union also won crucial backing from the Labor Department in a complaint that the union usurped power from its locals when it restructured. The union so far has remained neutral in the election, refusing to follow the rest of labor with a Kerry endorsement, and not officially backing Bush either.