The true meaning underlying the overwhelming election of Senator Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States can be summed up in the senator’s own words, which were offered just minutes after he was the confirmed victor: "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."
With those words, the politics of hope could bask in an unprecedented victory over the politics of negativity, division, and fear. Barack Obama won this election because he espoused a calm, measured and reasoned recipe for change at a very precarious time in the history of the United States. Even more important, Barack Obama’s message of hope and change and of a post-partisan approach to politics and governance was a collective call to action for all Americans – young and old, rich and poor – to take individual ownership of the problems that face our nation. And as a result, more people in the history of our nation spoke out at the polling booth and issued a profound statement that we can, indeed, come together as one nation to try to save it.
And that was a victory all its own.
In the post-election edition of Time magazine, Nancy Gibbs writes:
At a moment of obvious peril, America decided to place its fate in the hands of a man who had been born to an idealistic white teenage mother and the charismatic African grad student who abandoned them — a man who grew up without money, talked his way into good schools, worked his way up through the pitiless world of Chicago politics to the U.S. Senate and now the White House in a stunningly short period. That achievement, compared with those of the Bushes or the Kennedys or the Roosevelts or the Adamses or any of the other American princes who were born into power or bred to it, represents such a radical departure from the norm that it finally brings meaning to the promise taught from kindergarten: "Anyone can grow up to be President."
When all was said and done, more than 120 million Americans participated in this election. Barack Obama won more votes than any other presidential candidate in U.S. history. It was the biggest Democratic victory since Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater in 1964. Obama won a clear majority among male voters, which no Democrat had managed since Bill Clinton. He won 54% of Catholics, 66% of Latinos, and 68% of new voters. Most importantly to us, he won what looks to be well over 60% of building trades members in key battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. This overwhelming victory also cascaded down through the ballot, bringing along increased Democratic majorities in both the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
So, what does all this mean for America’s Building Trades Unions? Without question, we will certainly watch, and hopefully participate, in the development of a legislative and policy agenda that the incoming Obama Administration will pursue. From all initial indications, it will be an agenda that we can, and will, embrace and support.
Putting aside for a moment the legislative and regulatory benefits we expect to achieve in conjunction with an Obama Administration, there are also critical lessons that our unions can learn from the strategic approach of the Obama campaign…and in his preferred method of governing which is founded upon the principles of inclusiveness, cooperation and partnership. In the same manner that Senator Obama successfully pivoted his campaign towards a post-partisan approach to politics and governing, America’s Building Trades Unions are feverishly working to re-define and re-position the union construction industry away from a conflict-based mindset to one of value, performance, cooperation and partnership.
In terms of his domestic governing agenda, President-elect Obama is in sync with our stated opinion that America needs a bold and optimistic economic recovery plan that goes beyond conventional thinking and harnesses the economy to two very important new growth drivers: 1) public infrastructure investment; and 2) rising global demand for efficiency enhancing technology – especially that which can be applied to the development of renewable energy sources both here and abroad.
A long-term economic recovery program must steer our nation’s economy away from the consumption-based model that was espoused by the Bush Administration, in favor of a more investment-based economic ideology. For our money, the most promising new sources for sustained economic growth are contained within America’s enormous public infrastructure needs and the increased demand for the technologies and processes associated with the development of domestic sources of traditional and renewable energy.
Throughout American history, infrastructure investment has played a critical role in our economic development. As our nation moved west in the 1800s, the building of roads, canals and railroads expanded the field of economic opportunity. Later, investments in electricity and telephone networks facilitated the development of vast expanses of the American landscape that had previously been left behind. In our modern history, the development of the interstate highway system and the ever-expanding build-out of our nation’s broadband telecommunications networks have had the result of spurring new growth centers for many business sectors that previously would have had to be confined to large central cities.
Infrastructure is one of the basic building blocks of economic opportunity and sustained long-term growth. Up until recently, the standard infrastructure package would have been comprised simply of investments in roads, highways, bridges, water treatment facilities, railways, airports and communications networks.
In today’s network-centric, innovation and idea driven economy, however, infrastructure investments must now also include elementary and secondary school modernization, technology and training centers, export processing facilities, research parks, and a new energy infrastructure suited to the development of an array of domestic energy sources.
And in terms of the success that our unions can achieve by applying the strategic positioning lessons embodied by the Obama campaign, America’s Building Trades Unions are well on their way.
The Department has already initiated the development of a marketing and public relations campaign designed to effectively re-position the union construction industry brand to better meet the challenges that confront us in the 21st Century marketplace. Specifically, we are determined through this project to address four main challenges facing our unions and our industry today:
- Demonstrate change by re-positioning the union construction industry away from the current misperceptions and successfully disseminate our core values to end-users and contractors in the U.S. and Canada;
- Communicate how the building trade unions are evolving to offer strategic value to both construction users and contractors;
- Create a compelling internal message platform that is built from a new set of values and beliefs and that is supported from top management across the board to individual affiliate organizations and their presidents and rank and file members;
- Address the fast approaching skilled craftsman shortage in the US construction industry through a two-way conversation with young Americans and Canadians and current non-unionized skilled crafts people.
In other words, the Building and Construction Trades Department and its affiliated unions are taking a page from the Obama campaign and working to re-position our unions as post-confrontational, pro-partnership entities who bring strategic value to owners and contractors willing to work with the safest, most highly trained and productive workforce known to man.
You might even say that, within the North American construction market, WE ARE THE CHANGE THAT WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR!
As Senator Obama said on the night of his election, "This victory alone is not the change we see. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were."
We are now entering an era of American history where the possibility exists for ordinary people to do extraordinary things. And that certainly applies to an Obama Administration and for America’s Building Trades Unions…for we are merely at the end of the beginning.