With only three weeks to go before the election, union members are looking at key races for the U.S. Senate and House. In New Mexico and Kentucky, there’s a great chance to elect new pro-worker senators and House members, and workers in these states are stepping up to make sure these members will be listening to their concerns.

Union members in those two states recently got a chance to talk with three of the candidates last week: Bruce Lunsford, the candidate for Senate in Kentucky; Rep. Tom Udall, who is running for the open U.S. Senate seat in New Mexico; and Martin Heinrich, who’s running for the open U.S. House seat in New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District. These workers were able to get these candidates to address the issues that are really affecting their lives, their families and their communities.

The AFL-CIO union movement has held roundtables like these around the country, in which key elected officials, candidates and officers of the AFL-CIO, meet with workers and discuss their concerns. As the election approaches, AFL-CIO roundtables in states like Ohio, Oregon and Pennsylvania are drawing attention to the key races and issues in this election.

Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan says that the roundtable is a sign that if Lunsford unseats Sen. Mitch McConnell, Kentucky working families will get the voice they deserve in the Senate.

We want to hear from people, because our candidate is sitting here and listening. I think that’s an important aspect of this whole discussion, is that we’ve got a candidate who’s willing to sit at the table and listen to our concerns.

Jan Garkovich, a CWA member from Louisville, has been working around the state throughout the summer to mobilize union members. She was one of the attendees at the roundtable.

One of the key issues I’ve heard about is family members’ health care. They’re concerned about losing their health care.

Lunsford is the AFL-CIO-endorsed challenger to McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who has carried out a strategy of obstruction of working family-friendly measures. He spoke to several union members at a roundtable in Louisville last Monday.

In response to Garkovich’s concerns about health care, Lunsford talked about the need to cover more families and to help both workers and businesses by making sure health care is affordable. Health care costs are a serious drain on working families, and allowing more families to buy into group plans, rather than having millions of uninsured and millions more on their own in the individual insurance market, will help lower costs for everyone, including Medicare and Medicaid, which, Lunsford notes, are a growing part of the federal budget. If the Medicare program could, for example, negotiate for lower drug prices, that would also help control costs across the health care system, notes Lunsford. McConnell, however, voted to prevent Medicare from being able to negotiate for lower drug prices.

Those are issues that are easily sorted out—if you’re not sold out to the special interests, which I believe my opponent is.

(Meanwhile, McConnell, a virulent anti-worker ideologue who recently voted against extending unemployment insurance and opposed a second economic recovery program for working families, seems to be running a vicious campaign. Last week, McConnell’s campaign literally went after an 84-year-old World War II veteran who backed Lunsford in a paid-ad. Really. Details here.)

In New Mexico last Wednesday, nearly 250 union members packed Plumbers and Pipe Fitters (UA) Local 412’s hall in Albuquerque for an AFL-CIO-sponsored town hall meeting with Udall and Heinrich, reports Don Manning, New Mexico Labor 2008 state director. The blaze of colorful T-shirts identifying union members included: AFSCME, AFT, CWA, IAM, IBEW, IBT, Iron Workers, IUPAT, LIUNA, NALC, NATCA, NUHHCE, OPEIU, SMWIA, UA and USWA. New Mexico Federation of Labor President Christine Trujillo introduced Udall, who entered amid uproarious applause that Manning says must have sounded like a stampede from outside the building.

After their introductory speeches, Udall and Heinrich took questions from members of the audience. Among those to speak was Robert Aubert of IUPAT Local 823. Aubert spoke about families forced to take out second mortgages on their homes to pay bills.

Ernest “Red” Dow of  IAM Local 794 spoke on harmful trade legislation such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

The Machinists have lost hundreds of thousands of jobs to trade agreements that send jobs overseas. We need both of you to repeal these trade agreements.

J.D. Duran, an AFSCME retiree, described how his retirement fund has decreased by 15 percent in the past two months and how it’s hard to make ends meet. Duran asked Udall and Heinrich to protect Social Security from privatization—for him and for future retirees.

In his opening address, Udall focused on the foreclosure crisis. He said we must make it a priority to keep families in their homes. Heinrich, in his opening address, described an incident in which Fire Fighters paramedics rushed his sick wife to the hospital last year—a medical emergency visit that put health care atop his priority list.

As I looked around the emergency room, I saw many children, and I realized that their health care system is the school nurse and the emergency room. This needs to change.

Manning says the roundtable was an excellent chance for union members to show their support for Udall and Heinrich, and let them know what issues they’ll need to focus on in Congress.

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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.