WASHINGTON - October 30 - An unprecedented “Final Four” GOTV program by the AFL-CIO and its community affiliate Working America will deploy 100,000 union volunteers to reach millions of drop-off union voters in the final four days of the election, the AFL-CIO announced today. The “Final Four” program is the capstone push of the AFL-CIO’s drive to change the course of the country by mobilizing more than 13.4 million union voters in 32 states and 515 electoral races at all levels. The AFL-CIO GOTV program is the largest organizational turnout program in the nation, focused on electing candidates who will champion working families’ priorities.

“Working men and women are ready to change the direction of our nation and they will be the foot soldiers who will shift the balance of Congress on November 7,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

The “Final Four” program of worksite contacts, phone calls and front-stoop visits will kick in Saturday, November 4 and run four days, through election day. In the final four days, the AFL-CIO’s 100,000 union volunteers will knock on more than 3.5 million doors, make 5 million calls and reach 1.75 million workers at the worksite. The program will reach union voters with a special emphasis on identified “drop-off voters” – registered union members who voted in 2004 but not 2002.

In addition, Working America will add 500 paid canvassers in three top tier states - - Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania -- to knock on hundreds of thousands of doors in Columbus, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Minnesota’s 1st congressional district and make more than a million phone calls.

In the final four days in Ohio alone, the AFL-CIO and Working America will deploy thousands of volunteers who will knock on 280,000 doors and make over 1 million phone calls, targeting 500,000 drop-off voters.

Over the course of the last year, the AFL-CIO has run an extensive voter identification and microtargeting program focused on educating and turning out union voters in dozens of key congressional districts as well as Senate and gubernatorial races. The AFL-CIO identified 2.6 million drop-off voters in 2006, contacting them as many as 25 times throughout the course of the program. The AFL-CIO has made more than 10 million phone calls and sent more than 11 million pieces of mail urging union voters, including drop-offs, to get to the polls on November 7.

The strength of the AFL-CIO program is that it is co-worker to co-worker, neighbor to neighbor – not stranger to stranger. Research has repeatedly found that for workers, their unions are a source they trust.

Overall, the AFL-CIO runs a 365-day mobilization effort, which engages working family voters to hold their elected leaders accountable on the issues most important to them.

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