By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (PAI) - With the Democratic and Republican primaries over, and with Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) their parties' presumed presidential nominees, unions are turning their
attention to the fall campaign.

And that's even though the AFL-CIO is not expected, as a group, to endorse Obama much before mid-June,
more than a week after a combination of the Illinoisan's win in the Montana primary and super-delegate gains gave him the Democratic nod on June 3 over Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) in their hard-fought battle.

The Teamsters will campaign nationwide but concentrate on key states, union President James Hoffa told PAI after the June 4 trade press conference. Asked to name them, he responded: "Ohio, Ohio, Ohio." The Teamsters will also focus their efforts on the Midwestern-Northeastern industrial belt, he added.

"We'll motivate our members. We'll motivate their wives. We'll motivate their families. We'll motivate their grandmothers. We'll motivate their grandfathers," Hoffa said with a smile, to get out and campaign and vote for Teamsters-backed candidates, including Obama. "We'll have thousands of people in every state. I get up on a high-low and tell them: 'You're not voting for Obama. You're voting for yourselves.' "

Once the AFL-CIO endorses Obama - it already launched and upgraded its anti-McCain website, focusing on his anti-worker record - the federation can start massing ground troops for the fall. That's separate from its non-partisan education, registration and get-out-the-vote campaign, budgeted now at $54.3 million. That drive's cost may rise to as much as $60 million, AFL-CIO Political Committee Chairman Gerald McEntee, the AFSCME president, has said in the past.

Among other unions. the Mine Workers started a massive education blitz of their 105,000 members and retirees, showing them how Obama's economic issue stands agree with their own, particularly on health care.

The Steel Workers plan tens of thousands ofworksite visits by a corps of political activists, armed with information about Obama's positions, particularly on fair trade as opposed to free trade and on revitalizing U.S. manufacturing through high-paying - and unionized - jobs in "green" industries, such as making solar cells,
industrial-size windmills to power electric turbines, and hybrid auto engines.

The Service Employees, one of the nation's largest, decided at their convention June 2 to use $85 million for the fall campaign, out of the $150 million they allocated for politics in the next 12 months. Their political plan centers around holding candidates at all levels accountable for creating and backing a system of universal, comprehensive and affordable national health care - type unspecified.

Building trades unions individually were all over the map in endorsing Clinton, Obama and John Edwards during the primary season. But with the Democratic primary finally over, they're all expected to fall in line behind Obama.

"We will build a case for taking back our house - the White House - and
strengthening our position in the halls of Congress," said AFL-CIO Building Trades Department President Mark Ayers to delegates at the trades' convention in April. "Your work paid unexpected dividends in the last election to the extent it stopped the scurrilous attacks on unions and our members, and you are to be commended. But the job isn't finished.

"It is crucial that we finish what we started in 2006 so our friends in Congress have the necessary majorities to actually get pro-worker legislation passed. "We have taken some hard shots from the White House and Bush's cronies for eight long and difficult years. But with more hard work...you can be in position to finish the job you started in '06, with the thrill of victory as opposed to the agony of defeat." Workers" "passion for politics" and "hope for a better tomorrow is the foundation upon which this movement has been built," Ayers said.