With the latest poll showing California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown taking the lead over Meg Whitman, organized labor is pulling out all the stops. In the heart of East Los Angeles, where Pomona Boulevard meets South Atlantic Boulevard, a group of Latina working mothers volunteered Monday night at a phone bank for California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown.

They met in the second floor office of the Brown campaign in a small shopping center, directly across from the Metro Gold Line Atlantic Station.  

Some 20 volunteers worked methodically in cubicles, with a headset, script, and a computer set up to record the information on who they called and whether or not they were supportive.

With a view out onto the street and the occasional passing metro train, the labor volunteers diligently called registered voter after registered voter, making the case for why Jerry Brown deserved their vote.

Quiet confidence filled the room about Jerry Brown.  His opponent, Meg Whitman, “knows Latinos have all the power,” said volunteer Veronica Reyes.  And this group of volunteers were working diligently to get their fellow Latinos out to the polls and voting for Brown on Nov. 2.

The AFL-CIO organized this get-out-the-vote effort, and coordinates several throughout the Los Angeles region every weeknight.  The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor runs six full-time offices throughout the county, with an average of 185 volunteers working the phone banks each night, according to Communications Director Caroline O’Conner.

On the weekends, between 200 and 300 volunteers work the streets, going door-to-door in an orchestrated get out the vote effort in every neighborhood in Los Angeles County.  

Tuesday night is the big push, with volunteers phone-banking for Democratic candidates from the teachers union, the farmers union, the service workers union, and a myriad of other organized labor groups.  Over 300 volunteers come out during those big pushes.

The AFL-CIO has organized 3 million phone calls, with 150,000 supportive voters who will be contacted again in the days before the election to make sure they make it to the polls.

Veronica Reyes, 38, is a working mother and educator from Pico Union.  She was motivated to help mobilize other members of her community in support of the Brown campaign when his opponent, Meg Whitman, appointed Pete Wilson as her campaign manager.

Wilson was governor of California in the early 1990s, and was instrumental in passing Proposition 187, which barred illegal immigrants from public services such as health care and education before being deemed unconstitutional.

“That motivated me to become a U.S. citizen, and my parents also,” said Reyes.  She is originally from Guadalajara, Mexico, and has been a citizen for 10 years.

Whitman is trying – unsuccessfully – to cater to the Latino community, Reyes says, because “she knows Latinos have all the power.”  The latest polling data shows Brown in the lead of the gubernatorial race, thanks in large part to the support of women and Latinos.

But Reyes thinks that Whitman has double standards for the Latino community.  “Meg Whitman’s background is two-faced.  She’s there for the rich, but not for the poor.”

A fellow volunteer, Lourdes Morales, agrees.  “She’s two-faced.  She tells Channel 7 she’s anti-immigrant, but she tells Mexican stations the opposite.”

Morales is originally from Michoacan, Mexico, but has lived in the United States for 42 years.  She worked in the fields, picking tomatoes, onions, and chiles, before being a fisherwoman in San Pedro and, finally, a hotel worker in Los Angeles.  

She says that Jerry Brown was the “only governor who supported farm workers, who took care of poor people, immigrants,” and that’s why she’s supporting him again now.

Both Morales and Reyes worked diligently at their phone bank stations, speaking to registered voters in both English and Spanish about why they should care about the election this November and encouraging them to go to the polls.

Nancy Hernandez, a 27-year-old homemaker and mother of two young girls, was also volunteering at the phone bank.  

“We need to get out [and vote] for people who can’t vote, for our friends, family, and kids who can’t vote, who aren’t legally here,” she said.

Hernandez was particularly motivated to volunteer for get-out-the-vote efforts by the Nicky Diaz scandal.  Diaz, who was an employee of Whitman for nine years and worked as her housekeeper, revealed that she was undocumented and was fired by Whitman.

“It’s messed up that she didn’t support her worker.  That pumped us up,” Hernandez said, referring to the larger Latino community.

All three women stayed at the office until it closed, and planned on coming back again to get their fellow Latino community members to the polls on Nov. 2 to vote for Jerry Brown.

Reach Executive Producer Mary Slosson here.  Follow her on Twitter here.