Hard Knocks

They are everywhere. Outside New Seasons. On Hawthorne. Outside your
door. Clipboard-bearing canvassers are the bedrock of America’s major
progressive organizations, and Portland brings in millions of dollars
annually for groups like the Sierra Club and the American Civil
Liberties Union. During the summer, canvassing organizations’ bright
“Jobs to Save the Environment!” posters plaster Portland’s streets. But
two weeks ago, a small group of canvassers for Working America, the
community organizing wing of the American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), put up posters of their
own around town: “Canvassers Unite!”

Fed up with preaching about living wages and health care issues
while they’re barely scraping by—and with their jobs imperiled by
the recession—Working America canvassers are pushing for more
representation within their own organization. Forming a strong,
cohesive canvassing union is an infamously difficult task.

“Canvassers across the city are struggling, but each office is
struggling in its own way,” says Robby Kunkle, a Working America
canvasser who helped organize the “Canvassers Unite!” meeting.

Canvassing organizations find plenty of willing employees in
Portland, thanks to the city’s tight job market and abundance of
idealistic young liberals. In the month before the election, Working
America alone sent out 120-150 people a day, hitting 250,000 doors in
the Portland area, says Regional Director Dan Mahr.

According to many career canvassers, the vast majority of new hires
don’t last two weeks. This model of high, rapid turnover is part of the
problem, say canvassers who stick around long enough to earn health
benefits and raises.

“The longer you work with the organization, the more it makes you
feel like cheap labor,” says a canvasser who has worked for the Public
Interest Research Group (PIRG) for six months and is afraid she will be
fired for speaking out publicly.

“It sort of breaks your spirit sometimes,” she continues, describing
the feeling of stuffing envelopes with fliers saying PIRG is fighting
for state-mandated paid sick days while not receiving any paid sick
days herself. “They call it a grassroots organization, but when you see
all the numbers and how much they’re bringing in, you see it’s an elite
lobbying group,” says the PIRG canvasser, who raises $2,500 every two
weeks to earn her $750 paycheck.

Canvassers’ jobs and salaries depend on raising a certain amount of
money—”quota,” in canvasser jargon—every week. Quotas have
stayed the same despite the recession and high unemployment, placing
even career canvassers under stress.

“I’ve gotten really hardcore about it. I’ll ask people four times
[for a donation],” says Kunkle. Out of the dozens of houses he
canvassed one night last week, Kunkle says he talked to only four
employed people. “Everyone else was retired or unemployed.”

One canvasser at the PIRG office says workers have recently passed
around the Rose City Resource Guide—the city’s guide to social
services like food stamps—and brought in donated food baskets to
share.

“It doesn’t matter how good you are at convincing people to give you
money. If they don’t have it, they don’t have it,” says the PIRG
canvasser.

At the “Canvassers Unite!” meeting on Saturday, February 21, Working
America doorknockers discussed their options. They could try to work
within their existing union, Office and Professional Employees
International Union, Local 2—which at the time they agreed was
unresponsive, since it’s based in Maryland—or withdraw from the
union and start their own here in Portland.

At the meeting, Kunkle was adamant that the issue is not so much
about higher wages than wanting more fundraising tools to help meet
quota—like membership lists. “What’s exciting about this is that
it’s a positive thing,” he says. “We’re fighting for our own jobs and
we love doing this.”

Previous attempts to unionize canvassing organizations have ended in
failure.

“These organizations have really high turnover rates, which makes it
really hard to sustain any union effort,” says Christian Miller, who
led a union effort at a Los Angeles-based PIRG office in 2006. He says
the PIRG found excuses to fire the union organizers over the course of
a year and then shut down the office.

For now, the Working America canvassers decided not to break off and
start their own union. Instead, they hope that meeting weekly with
their existing union reps will change the organization from within.

Working America’s Mahr says that while canvassing isn’t the job for
everyone, “We’ve been doing this for four years successfully now, and
we’re certainly open for discussions with staff.”

PIRG did not return the Mercury‘s repeated requests for
comment by press time.