每周四下午，美国劳工联合会-产业工会联合会（AFL-CIO）的一批州级领导都会通过 Zoom 召开会议，推进一个共同项目——“与工薪阶层的美国人民签订的契约”。这是一份他们独立于全国 AFL-CIO 制定的民粹主义经济纲领。
The Scoop Every Thursday afternoon, a cadre of state AFL-CIO leaders meets on Zoom to advance a shared project: the “Contract with Working Americans,” a populist economic platform they devised independently of the national AFL-CIO.
这些会议是劳工运动一种新的组织策略。历史上，劳工运动通常是从华盛顿自上而下地领导，而这次的目标也与众不同：不仅要动员工会成员，还要动员那些尚未加入工会的更多美国工人。
These calls are a new organizing tactic for labor, which historically leads top down from Washington, and the goal is new, too: to mobilize not only workers who belong to unions, but the many more American workers who do not.
“我们正试图连接一个群体中的两个部分。坦率地说，这两个部分本应天然地站在一起，但现实并非如此，”覆盖得克萨斯州的美国通信工人联合会第六区副主席德里克·奥索巴塞（Derrick Osobase）表示。“我们正在积极与那些未加入工会的工薪阶层人士对话，并将他们纳入一个他们表示能够改变自身生活的议程中。”
“We’re trying to connect two segments of a group that, quite frankly, should be naturally aligned, but just haven’t,” said Derrick Osobase, vice president of Communications Workers of America District 6, which covers Texas. “We are actively talking to working-class people who are not affiliated with the union, and wrapping them into an agenda that they have said will make their lives different.”The idea for the “contract” was born of a paradox: Union membership has declined from 20% of all workers in 1983 to 10% last year, even as union popularity hovers at 90-year highs. Seventy-one percent of US adults approve of unions, according to Gallup, including 52% of Republicans.
“契约”这一构想源于一种矛盾现象：尽管工会的受欢迎程度处于 90 年来的最高水平，但工会成员比例却从 1983 年的所有工人中的 20% 下降到了去年的 10%。根据盖洛普（Gallup）的数据，71% 的美国成年人支持工会，其中包括 52% 的共和党人。组织者们正是在这些数据之间的差距中看到了机会。
The widening gap between those figures is where organizers see an opportunity.
“多年来，劳工运动出于可以理解的原因，一直专注于更有限的一系列议题，”缅因州劳工气候理事会执行主任弗朗西斯·伊恩斯（Francis Eanes）表示。“但我认为，这也让一些人很容易说，我们不过是另一个为自己利益而斗争的特殊利益集团。”
“For years the labor movement, for understandable reasons, has fought for a narrower set of issues,” said Francis Eanes, executive director of the Maine Labor Climate Council. “But I think it’s made it easy for some folks to say we’re just another special interest out there fighting for our own.”
他说，劳工运动的批评者认为，工会“是一个只为成员提供福利的私人福利国家，而其他人则无法受益。我认为这种描述并不公平，但也并非完全毫无道理。”盖洛普的数据表明，不同政治倾向的美国人都似乎得出了这样的结论：私人福利国家或许并不是那么糟糕的想法。
Skeptics of labor, he said, say a union is “a private welfare state that provides benefits to its members and no one else. I think it’s an unfair characterization, but it’s not entirely unfair.”The Gallup numbers suggest Americans of different political shades seem to be concluding that private welfare states aren’t such a bad idea.
在人们对国会、政党、媒体及许多其他机构的信任持续下降之际，劳工活动家们认为，一场由工会主导的运动或许能真正发挥影响力，为全体工人利益而发起的这场运动，有望确立一项与纽特·金里奇1994年提出的《美国契约》同样大胆的新国家议程。当年，《美国契约》帮助共和党在国会大选中取得了压倒性多数席位。
In a moment of declining trust in Congress, political parties, the media and many other institutions, labor activists believe a union-led movement whose stated aim is to agitate for the benefit of all workers could have real juice in setting a new national agenda as audacious as Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America,” which helped produce a sweeping congressional majority for Republicans that year.
“两大政党都极不受民众欢迎，而工会的受欢迎程度却比以往任何时候都高，”缅因州AFL-CIO执行主任马特·施洛博姆表示。“我们——广大劳动者和劳工运动——必须明确定义并推出一套议程，并为之争取支持。否则，别人就会替我们定义议程，那要么就是文化战争，要么就是一些含糊其辞的‘机会主义’议程。”《与工薪阶层美国人的契约》的核心条款，源于各州AFL-CIO及其附属组织开展的一系列街头走访调查。
“Both political parties are wildly unpopular. Unions are more popular than ever,” said Matt Schlobohm, executive director of the Maine AFL-CIO. “It is really important that we — working people, the labor movement — define and put out an agenda and demand it. Or somebody else will define it for us, and it’ll be culture wars, or it’ll be some mealy-mouth opportunity agenda.”The main tenets of the “Contract with Working Americans” were born out of a series of canvassing surveys led by state AFL-CIOs and affiliates.
但这份契约并非一份统一文件，各州的版本因应本地行业与产业的不同而有所差异。（美国国家AFL-CIO未回应置评请求。）“契约”框架的灵感来自工会通过谈判达成的合同，旨在促使候选人作出政策承诺，以换取劳工运动的支持。所有版本都包含一系列经济优先事项：签署者必须支持通过扩大政府与药企直接谈判的权力来降低处方药成本、扩大医疗覆盖范围、限制育儿费用、降低油价以及提高最低工资标准。
But there is no single document; iterations of it vary somewhat from state to state, to account for local trades and industries. (The national AFL-CIO did not respond to a request for comment.) The “contract” framework was inspired by negotiated union contracts and is meant to establish policy commitments from candidates in exchange for the movement’s support. All versions include a set of economic priorities: Signatories must support lowering prescription drug costs by expanding the government’s power to negotiate directly with companies, expanding healthcare coverage, capping childcare costs, bringing down the price of gas, and raising the minimum wage.
这些合同通篇都采用了民粹主义口吻。其中包含共同提出的要求：禁止国会议员进行股票交易，禁止民选官员离职后从事游说活动；对亿万富翁征税；以及在人工智能焦虑日益加剧的当下，禁止使用人工智能进行监控，以防止“机器人决定你的工资、雇佣或解雇你，或者监控你的工作”。这些条款并未涉及身份认同或刑事司法领域的具体规定，也基本避开了气候议题。
The contracts adopt a populist tone throughout. They include shared language demanding a congressional stock trading ban and a ban on lobbying by elected officials after leaving office; a tax on billionaires; and, in a time of rising AI anxiety, a ban on AI surveillance, to prevent “robots deciding your paycheck, hiring and firing you, or monitoring your work.”The language does not include identity- or criminal justice-specific provisions, and largely steers clear of climate topics.
在本轮选举中，已有几位在全国范围内具有一定知名度的候选人签署了该合同的不同版本。其中包括得克萨斯州的候选人——民主党希望参议员候选人詹姆斯·塔拉里科和州长候选人吉娜·希诺霍萨能将该州打造成下个月“蓝色浪潮”的起点。缅因州的民主党参议员候选人特洛伊·杰克逊则公开发布了《向缅因州劳动者承诺》，采纳了该合同在缅因州提出的各项要求。
Several candidates with national profiles have signed on to versions of the contract so far this cycle, including in Texas, where Democrats hope that Senate nominee James Talarico and gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa could make the state ground zero for a Blue Wave next month. Troy Jackson, the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, delivered a public “Pledge to Working Mainers” adopting the demands in Maine’s contract.
阿拉斯加独立候选人比尔·希尔是一名商业渔民兼教师，他正在挑战共和党众议员尼克·贝吉奇。他告诉Semafor，自己支持该合同中的理念，尽管目前还没有专门针对阿拉斯加的版本可供签署。
Independent Alaska candidate Bill Hill, a commercial fisherman and teacher challenging Republican Rep. Nick Begich, told Semafor he supports the ideas in the contract, though there isn’t an Alaska-specific version of the contract to sign.
希尔在一份声明中表示：“这关乎一项能为这个国家勤劳人民带来实际利益的议程——通过降低生活成本，确保劳动者获得与其努力相匹配的回报，并建立一个让亿万富翁和大企业与我们遵守相同规则的系统。”
“This is about an agenda that delivers for the hardworking people of this country, by lowering costs, making sure hardworking people get the value of their hard work, and building a system where billionaires and big corporations play by the same rules we do,” Hill said in a statement.
另一个州的AFL-CIO工会及其支持的州级职位候选人也已同意本周内签署该合同，更多组织也在考虑加入。
Another state AFL-CIO, and its endorsed candidate for statewide office, have agreed to sign on as soon as this week, and more are circling.
目前还没有任何共和党人支持这些合同之一。北卡罗来纳州和缅因州的组织者表示，共和党候选人迈克尔·瓦特利和参议员苏珊·柯林斯的竞选团队尚未回应他们的联系。
No Republicans have backed one of these contracts. Organizers in North Carolina and Maine said that the campaigns for Republican Michael Whatley and Sen. Susan Collins had not responded to their outreach.
尽管如此，组织者表示他们看到了进展。在采访中，大多数人认为，劳工力量长期以来与民主党过于紧密地绑定，导致了一种“相互的倦怠”，正如北卡罗来纳州AFL-CIO主席布拉克斯顿·温斯顿所说。
Still, organizers said they see progress. In interviews, most said they believe labor has long been too aligned with the Democratic Party, leading to a kind of “mutual malaise,” in the words of North Carolina AFL-CIO President Braxton Winston.
伊恩斯强调，这份合同有可能将某种他认为是良性交易主义的东西重新注入民主进程：通过围绕具体的政策诉求激发投票热情，重建工会早已炉火纯熟的反馈机制。
Eanes touted the contract’s potential to inject what he saw a bit of virtuous transactionalism back into the democratic process by energizing votes around specific policy demands, building back a kind of feedback loop that unions have down to a science.
“他们已经做出了承诺。我们将确保这份合同成为他们执政方式中不可或缺的一部分，”来自Hinojosa和Talarico的奥索巴塞说道，但他拒绝说明，如果未来某位候选人当选后未能兑现承诺，这是否意味着支持初选挑战者。
“They have committed. We’re going to hold them to the fact that this contract has to be an essential part of how they govern,” said Osobase of Hinojosa and Talarico, though he declined to say whether that could entail supporting primary challengers in the future if either candidate gets elected and fails to deliver.
了解更多：各州AFL-CIO及其附属组织在2024年和2025年期间对工会成员和非工会工人进行了数千次调查，从中获得的见解随后被提炼为合同中列出的要点。缅因州、北卡罗来纳州和得克萨斯州的AFL-CIO及其附属组织在本轮选举中已经敲响了数十万扇门，向选民展示了这份合同以及各候选人的立场。
Know More State AFL-CIOs and affiliates conducted thousands of surveys of union members and non-union workers over 2024 and 2025, gleaning insights that were then distilled down to the bullet points that appear in the contracts. The Maine, North Carolina, and Texas AFL-CIOs and their affiliates have knocked hundreds of thousands of doors already this cycle, presenting voters with the contract and where the candidates stand.
“对我们来说，这个项目旨在复兴劳工运动最优秀的一面，”伊恩斯说。“纵观过去200年的历史，当我们为所有人而战时，我们更容易取得胜利：当诉求更加广泛，当这些诉求回应了所有劳动者的需求时，我们就能发挥最大的影响力和共鸣。坦率地说，在大多数人不再信任任何机构的时候，他们仍然认为有组织的劳工是值得信任的。”这份合同与进步派意识形态潮流最显著的差异在于人工智能问题：Semafor审阅的任何版本合同都没有要求暂停建设数据中心。
“This project for us is about reviving the best of the labor movement,” Eanes said. “If you go over the arc of the last 200 years, we win more when we’re fighting for everyone: When the demands are broader, when the demands speak to the needs of all working people, that’s where we have the most power and resonance, and frankly, at a moment when most people don’t trust any institution, they still see organized labor as something that can be trusted.”The contract’s most striking divergence from progressive ideological currents is on AI: No version of the contract reviewed by Semafor demands a data center moratorium.
伊恩斯表示，数据中心的建设对建筑行业来说是一项“巨大的福音”。
The buildout has been an “enormous boon” to the building trades, Eanes said.
“在最理想的情况下，[暂停政策] 能为你争取时间，让你真正思考出整个新兴行业和企业应有的合作条款，”伊恩斯说道。
“At its best, [a moratorium] is something that buys you time to actually come up with what the terms of engagement for this entire new industry and enterprise ought to be,” Eanes said.
然而，缅因州的合同却提出了一系列要求：数据中心必须自负盈亏，自行供应所需的水和电力，并且当然还要利用工会劳动力——这些要求在其他州的组织者中也得到了呼应。此外，该合同还用民粹主义的语言包装了论点：其目的是“确保劳动者决定人工智能的未来，而不是马克·扎克伯格和埃隆·马斯克”。存在分歧的空间 尽管这一纲领为共和党带来了广泛胜利，使其控制了参众两院——众议院甚至实现了12年不间断的共和党统治——但金里奇最初的《美国契约》中几乎没有任何内容最终成为法律。
Instead, Maine’s contract makes a series of requirements: Data centers must pay their own way, supply their own water and electricity needs, and, of course, tap union labor — demands echoed by organizers in other states. And the contract wraps the argument in populist language; The point is to “ensure working people determine the AI future, not Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.”Room for Disagreement Though it produced sweeping gains for Republicans, control of both chambers — and, in the House, 12 years of uninterrupted Republican rule — little of Gingrich’s original “Contract with America” ever became law.
代表美国和加拿大约14万名工人的国际油漆及相关行业工会负责人吉米·威廉姆斯告诉Semafor，他觉得民主党“已经太多次将工会组织晾在一边了”。“我个人认为，共和党在坚持原则方面做得要好得多。”但他表示，这份合同的存在以及它在杰克逊和塔拉里科的支持者，已经是一种进步。
Jimmy Williams, head of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, which represents some 140,000 workers across the US and Canada, told Semafor that he felt that organized labor had “been left at the altar way too many times” by the Democrats. (“I believe personally that the Republican Party has done such a better job at being principled.“) But the fact that the contract exists and has adherents in Jackson and Talarico is an improvement, he said.
“民主党内部正在崛起的候选人，已经正确传达了如何触达过去20多年以来一直分裂的工薪阶层选民的信息，”威廉姆斯说。“这是开启一场真正对话的开端，探讨如何构建一个能够应对当前时局的运动，而《与工薪美国人的契约》正是开启这些对话的最佳起点。”但他也指出，该契约“还需要再进一步”，即“推行真正的劳动法改革”。
“The candidates that are emerging within the Democratic Party are getting the message right when it comes to how to reach working-class voters that have been divided now for the last 20-some years,” Williams said. “It’s the start of a real conversation about how to build a movement to meet this current moment, and the Contract with Working Americans is the best place to start having those conversations.”But it also “needs to go a little bit further” by “adopting real labor law reform.”
组织者的观点是，《与工薪美国人的契约》或许会比金里奇1994年的纲领更具持久性，尤其是在这一选举周期以及11月3日之后，如果它能在摇摆州获得更多支持者和知名签署人的话。
The organizers’ theory is that the Contract with Working Americans could prove more enduring than Gingrich’s 1994 platform, especially if it gains more pickup and high-profile signatories in swing states this cycle and after Nov. 3.
他们认为，这种力量的关键在于其去中心化的特性——它并非围绕某个个人或一群个人展开，而是将政策置于首位。如果能在1994年中期选举那样的规模上立即取得成果固然不错，但这并非必不可少：我交谈过的每个人都明确表示，他们并不认为这个项目会在11月3日结束。
Its potency, they believe, comes from the fact that it’s decentralized, not organized around a personality or set of personalities, and policy-first. Immediate results on the scale of the 1994 off-year elections would be nice, but are not essential: Everyone I spoke to made clear they didn’t see this as a project that ends on Nov. 3.
“我接受过这样的训练：政治并不只是每两到四年在选举期间才做的事情，”北卡罗来纳州AFL-CIO附属工会UNITE HERE的首席幕僚斯科特·库珀说道。“它在选举周期之间也会持续进行。”在《新共和》杂志上，莫妮卡·波茨对本届选举中参选州级职位的一些工会成员进行了报道。“工薪阶层已经厌倦了那些从未经历过他们的困境却空谈其挣扎的政客，”一位AFL-CIO发言人表示。
“I was trained that politics is not just something you do every two to four years around election times,” said Scott Cooper, chief of staff at UNITE HERE, a North Carolina AFL-CIO affiliate. “It’s something that continues on between the cycles.”Notable At The New Republic, Monica Potts profiled some of the union members running for statewide office this cycle. “Working people are tired of politicians who talk about their struggles without having lived them,” an AFL-CIO spokesperson said.