To end the suspense right away, I am not going to say which candidate I think labor should support. I have a favorite candidate who I think would be the strongest pro-labor candidate—and would remember labor once elected. But, here, I simply want to suggest what the criteria might be for labor to choose a candidate and how labor should use the presidential contest to advance the interest of workers. And I’d like to hear what your suggestions might be for additional criteria.

This week, the AFL-CIO Executive Council will be meeting, and one thing on the agenda is its presidential endorsement procedure. My suspicion is that no single candidate will be able to garner the votes to secure the AFL-CIO’s endorsement in the primaries. I doubt the Federation will be able to convince individual unions to sit out the primaries so a number of them might choose to leap into the race. The Change To Win federation has already been engaging with presidential candidates and many of the candidates have been making appearances before labor’s leadership bodies or labor-sponsored events. Obviously, labor support means a lot, particularly in states like Iowa where getting people out to caucus on a cold winter night requires strong precinct operations, or California and New York where unions are strong and can spend money mobilizing their troops on behalf of one candidate or another.

As I’ve watched the labor movement function in presidential campaigns over the last 25 years, I’ve noticed that we often get into the same pundit-framed, decision-making process that consumes our country, preferring to embrace who might win, who has the most money and where the candidate is polling. For example, in the 2004 race, one international union president, whose name I won’t mention here, switched three times during the primaries, driven solely by how this union president’s choices were faring in the polls.

In my humble opinion, in past years, organized labor has not looked at the presidential race as a way of gaining strategic advantage in the party and, more important, in the debate in the country over the question of unions and workers. If we were to think strategically, it might make sense, for example, to support a candidate who might not be the favorite in the polls or have the most money because s/he can actually talk about unions in a convincing way and deliver a message that resonates with voters—and inject those issues into the race and force the party nominee, should s/he actually win, to carry labor’s agenda. Instead, we get candidates who, once chosen and elected, ally themselves as quickly as they can with the business interests that fund the party.

That said, here are a few thoughts about what labor should be looking at in a candidate:

Can the Candidate actually talk about unions? I don’t mean can the candidate give a pep rally speech when pitching a union crowd for an endorsement or a check. I’ve been at countless meetings where political candidates, in full pander mode, talk about how important unions are for our society—and, then, don’t even mention them much on the campaign trail and forget unions even exist when they get elected.

I think unions should look for a candidate who can weave into their vision of the economy the key role unions play in bringing real prosperity to working people. Which candidate, we should ask, understands and will say, repeatedly, that the gap between rich and poor, the disappearing of real pensions, the lack of health care for 48 million people and the obscenity of corporate pay—all of those trends coincide precisely with the decline in union power (which, I can barely stand to write, is at 7.4 percent in the private sector)?

Can the Candidate break from the false worship of the twins gods of the so-called “free market” and so-called “free trade”? Is there a candidate who can say that “free market” and “free trade” are both marketing phrases? There is no such thing as a “free market” because every corporation in America profits thanks to subsidized public goods like education, roads, the electric power grid, and (albeit, too permissive) regulatory management of the stock market, which imposes stability and deters dishonest behavior. So-called “free trade” is a mirage—nothing is “free trade” about a global trading regime that has iron-clad protection for capital investment and corporate intellectual property, and thrives on controlling and suppressing wages of workers, particularly in China.

Labor needs a candidate who understands that the twin false marketing phrases have made Democrats quiver, tremble and crumble in the face of policies that have been devastating to our country and the world for the past several decades. It has made the Democratic Party incapable of advancing ideas and proposals that people so desperately need. Can a candidate stand up and clearly say that the real choice is not over politically empty slogans or accusations of ‘protectionism’ but over what rules we want to govern how the economy operates for the benefit of our families and communities? Can the candidate say that, first and foremost, we need rules that support people and their communities, not powerful, global corporations?

Which Candidate actually has walked a picket line or spent quality time on a union organizing campaign? You may think it’s a small point. But, a candidate who can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with people who are in a fight with their employers (either on strike or when they are battling to win the right to have a union) is a person who isn’t likely to play the neutrality game once in office a la “I can’t side with either workers or the employer”—or worse. And which candidate has done that throughout their life, not just when they needed a convenient photo-op to show they care about workers?

Which Candidate can show a real record of fighting for good laws, or at least a real plan for the future? I’m not in favor of making a checklist for every vote. And it isn’t always the actual vote we should look at: we should also judge a candidate based on how hard s/he fought to pass a piece of legislation or fight against some really awful legislation. It doesn’t cut any ice with me if someone was there for a vote, whose outcome is known by all, but did very little along the hard road to victory. Right now, of the declared or likely Democratic candidates, all but two serve in office: Sens. Biden, Clinton, Dodd, and Obama , Rep. Kucinich and Gov. Richardson; former Sens. Edwards and Gravel (that would be Mike Gravel from Alaska who may get less coverage this year than Kucinich) are the out-of-office candidates. Here are several things I would submit bear watching in the coming weeks and months and should be key barometers:

Fast Track: I do not know how any union can endorse a candidate who doesn’t vote against “fast track.” Actually, the bar should be set higher: each of the candidates needs to put their heart and soul into defeating the extension of this law. The short version: “fast track” gives the power to the president to present trade deals to the Congress for an up or down vote, with no possibility of amendment. It’s better thought of as “ram-this-down-your-throat” authority. This should be a bi-partisan issue: when many union leaders/activists (including yours truly) were fighting the Clinton Administration’s bid in the 1990s to impose “fast track,” we pointed out that, regardless of party, “fast track” hands over too much power to the executive branch and undercuts the ability of the people to have their say, via their members of Congress, on how the rules are set to govern economic relationships with other countries.

Employee Free Choice Act: this is a no-brainer. Every Democratic candidate holding a federal office will vote for this bill, which, as the astute readers here know, would make the process of union organizing a lot fairer. The real question, though, is will those candidates take a leadership role in fighting for the bill? Now that the bill has passed the House, that’s a bigger question for the Senators in the crowd because the Senate is where the bill will likely die, absent a miracle. There simply aren’t the 60 votes to overcome a filibuster—and I don’t see where we reach 60 votes anytime soon, even after the 2008 elections. But, what we should look for is some spine: which Senator will lay down a real marker by proclaiming that those who oppose the bill are protecting the rich and the powerful over the rights of the average worker and which candidate will make it clear that the passage of the bill must be a priority for the Democratic Party.

Health Care: I personally believe that single-payer health care is the only economically viable and socially responsible solution to the crisis in health care. But, at the very least, a labor-backed candidate has to be pushing a plan that takes away the power from the insurance industry and drug companies to exploit tens of millions of Americans by shaking every nickel from their pockets and saddling them with inadequate health care coverage—not to mention the damage down to companies groaning under the weight of health care costs.

The Iraq War: I stuck to the economic issues in this post; that isn’t to say that unions shouldn’t consider candidates positions on non-economic issues. That said, the war is a huge economic issue—it could cost the country up to $2 trillion. Who pays that bill? The workers. Even if they have no idea the bill is coming, it will happen either in the form of higher taxes, and/or higher interest rates and/or cuts in government services that we all depend on. So, unions should take a careful look at the candidates’ position on the war and current occupation.

This is intentionally not an exhaustive list because I’m interested in hearing what others have to offer. What are your ideas?