APALA, one of the AFL-CIO\'s "affinity groups"--along with the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the A. Philip Randolph Institute, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Pride at Work--brought hundreds of trade unionists to Washington for their convention, to celebrate their struggles and to chart a path for further advances and victory for working families in 2008.

That election goal is in line with the aims of the national AFL-CIO and the other affinity groups. The federation is laying ambitious plans to expand pro-worker numbers in Congress and to retake the White House.

One theme of APALA\'s convention was "Living the Legacy," saluting the centuries-long struggle of Asian American and Pacific Islander workers against racist oppression and super-exploitation. But another was implementing the resolution adopted at the AFL-CIO\'s 2005 convention, to improve racial and gender diversity in union leadership.

APALA President Maria Somma told the delegates the group has tripled in membership since it was founded 15 years ago. There are now more Asian-Pacific American union organizers, she said, "due in large part to our partnership with the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute." Participants included Change to Win delegates and AFL-CIO members.

Like the rest of organized labor, Somma continued, APALA "has seen the decline in union membership, stagnant wages, disappearing pensions, massive job losses and eroding health care benefits. Unrestricted free market policies are wreaking havoc on workers and benefiting only corporate executives and the wealthy."

Christine Chen, executive director of Asian-Pacific Islander Vote, said the group\'s voter clout is increasing. In Washington state, Democrat Christine Gregoire won the race for governor by only 146 votes last November. Asian American and Pacific Islander votes were her victory margin, Chen said.

In Virginia, GOP Sen. George Allen\'s use of a racist slur--against an American whose parents emigrated from India--galvanized Asian-American voters, who voted 76 percent for Democratic victor Jim Webb. Webb\'s win gave Democrats control of the Senate.

Yet the Asian-American vote still lags, Chen said: "We need to educate voters not only to get out and vote but to insist that candidates support our interests and our values."

Glenn Magpantay of the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund said Asian-American voters in 2006 "faced discrimination, racial profiling and harassment" similar to Republican vote suppression tactics against others in 2000. Even so, "Asian-Americans voted for change just as voters in general voted for change," he said.

And Asian-Americans supported "legalization of undocumented immigrants and reducing immigration backlogs while they opposed making undocumented a crime," Magpantay said. Legislation legalizing undocumented workers fell victim to a GOP Senate filibuster this year.

AFL-CIO Political Director Karen Ackerman called the 2008 elections an opportunity "to shift the obscene imbalance of power going to the corporations while workers are losing out." Yet, she warned "the Democrats have not made the sale. This is not going to be a slam-dunk." She repeated that warning to union leaders gathered in Chicago.

And she also noted that Democrats are not automatically pro-worker, citing NAFTA as an example. Inn 1993, when the House, Senate and White House were all in Democratic hands, passage of NAFTA produced devastating consequences for worker, she said. The "strategic goal" for workers is a political realignment "to establish a long-term progressive, pro-worker, pro-union political environment in this country."

At a town hall meeting featuring panelists from the other constituency groups, their leaders echoed several of the themes APALA delegates discussed.

Randolph Institute President Richard Womack addressed the need for more action to have labor\'s leadership reflect diversity of membership. "We must go back to our local unions and ask: ‘What are you doing to implement (the) resolution?\' If you don\'t get involved, make a push, it isn\'t going to happen. We want to look at the leadership of the labor movement in years to come and say: ‘We have won a seat at the table.\'"

LCLAA Executive Director Gabriela Lemus said solving job loss created by anti-worker trade policy "will not be by building walls along our borders but by addressing the underlying crisis of unemployment generated by NAFTA." The key to winning in 2008, she said, is "coalition-building, reaching out, working at ground level to build it up."

And CLUW Executive Director Carol Rosenblatt stressed how the Iraq War helped swing women into the 2006 victory coalition. "Our campaign against the war in Iraq was decisive. The war in Iraq impacts everybody, women and their families and we plan to continue pressing that issue," she said, drawing a big round of applause.

Tim Wheeler writes for the People\'s Weekly World. This article was distributed by Press Associates, Inc., news service.