Joe Biden’s most revolutionary idea: Rebuilding America’s unions

Joe Biden may not have been the candidate that progressives wanted, but in the 50 days he has been in the White House he has confounded expectations that he would govern as a centrist.

The $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package passed this week was described by Bernie Sanders as "the most significant piece of legislation to benefit working people in the modern history of this country.” It included direct cash payments, tax credits that could cut child poverty in half and a significant expansion of healthcare subsidies. The battle to raise the minimum wage is only just beginning and his administration is packed with Elizabeth Warren acolytes.

But there is another side to Biden’s progressivism that could be just as transformational as his early economic push: his fervent support for unions.

During the campaign, Biden promised to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen”. He frequently referenced his middle class upbringing in Scranton, Pennsylvania, as proof that he understood the struggles of working people. As a young boy growing up in there he would have often passed by a grand statue of legendary labour leader John Mitchell outside of the courthouse in the centre of town. Mitchell, the leader of the United Mine Workers of America, played a key role in the "Great Strike" of 1902 in which coal miners went on strike work for higher wages, shorter workdays, and the recognition of their union — and won. On the site of that great union victory the young Biden would have also seen families leave town as the same coal mines closed and industry died. His own family left when his father could no longer find work.

On the campaign trail, Biden’s pro-union stance sounded like a kind of old-timey progressivism rooted in a different time and a different economy, not so different from his love of trains. But in the White House — if followed through with action — it has the potential to be revolutionary.

Read more: Amazon worker fired after raising safety concerns is starting a revolution from the outside

Biden is pushing a series of measures aimed at rebuilding America’s unions. He set the tone from his very first day in office by placing a bust of another labour leader, Cesar Chavez, behind his desk. Days later he signed an executive order that restored collective bargaining power for federal employees. He has thrown his support behind the "Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act," a bill that was recently passed by the House that he said would "dramatically enhance the power of workers to organize and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions."

His ascendency to the presidency has also come at a serendipitous moment. The coronavirus pandemic and associated economic crisis has led to a surge in support for labour unions after several decades of decline. Millions of people who lost their jobs during the crisis are now seeing the benefits of organising to protect themselves. A recent Gallup poll found that some 65 per cent of Americans approve of labour unions — the highest it has been since 2003. Support has generally been trending upwards since the Great Recession in 2009.

And significantly, in the first weeks of his presidency, he threw his support behind an effort by Amazon workers in Alabama to form a union — an battle that has drawn national attention due to the implications it could have for similar initiatives within the tech company nationwide. 

“Today and over the next few days and weeks, workers in Alabama and all across America are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace,” Biden said. “This is vitally important, a vitally important choice as America grapples with the deadly pandemic, the economic crisis and the reckoning on race — what it reveals (about) the deep disparities that still exist in our country.”

While he didn’t name Amazon directly, he said “there should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda. No supervisor should confront employees about their union preferences.”

It was a remarkable intervention for a president to make. Taken together, the various initiatives pushed by the Biden administration could have a dramatic impact on the economy that lasts beyond his presidency.

The underlying logic is this: there is a strong body of evidence that rising income inequality in America since the 1970s is linked to the decline of union power. By restoring some of that power, Biden could give workers the tools to fight for better wages long after he leaves office and reverse a decades-long trend of wealth transferring from the middle class to a smaller number of the wealthiest Americans.

“It’s really significant to have the president of the United States stand up and say ‘I’m a union man,’” said Dr Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist and co-chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley.

“We’ve been 40 going on 50 years now of a concerted effort to whittle away at union density, union membership, union power, it has coincided greatly with inequality, with massive increase of wealth in income at the top, of corporate control over the whole economy in the US,” she said.

“We have a very unbalanced system and the only thing that can counter this inequality of power is power, and that has to come in one form is union power and collective action. Just to have it positively talked about is a great beginning.”

But Biden has a huge hill to climb to rebuild America’s once-strong labor movement. In the 1950s — the peak of union power — over a third of the working population belonged to a union. That number is now around 10 per cent.  Decades of attacks by corporate power and successive Republican governments, most significantly under Ronald Reagan, severely weakened the power of the unions.

The PRO Act aims to reverse that decline and make it easier for people to join unions by imposing penalties on companies that actively undermine organising efforts. The bill is likely to face significant opposition from corporate America. Suzanne Clark, the president of the US Chamber of Commerce, said in a letter to Congress this week that it would "impede the economic recovery through its many harmful labor and employment policies." Republicans have called it a job killer.

The Biden administration has momentum, however, and appears keen to push the legislation while the lessons of the coronavirus pandemic are still fresh in people’s minds.

“I think the pandemic really brought so many issues to the forefront for so many workers who never really had these worries before,” Dr Allegretto said.

“The fissures exposed in our labour market over this pandemic have been truly eye opening. So many who never even considered a union were being forced to go to work when they didn’t feel safe, and they didn’t have a voice. So many now understand why we need universal policies like paid sick leave and childcare.”

Biden’s intervention may already be having an impact. The New York Times reported this week that his decision to use the bully pulpit of he presidency to back Amazon workers seeking union recognition in Alabama has emboldoned organisers there.

What happens in Alabama could have implications for the more than 800,000 workers employed by Amazon nationwide. If this drive is successful, it could spread across the country. Union-busting efforts employed by Amazon and other companies in the past may prove to be less effective with a union man in the White House.