With a few holdouts, Kamala Harris rides Biden wave to pick up union support

Kamala Harris is on track to wrap up support from America’s biggest labor unions, even as Republicans led by JD Vance and Donald Trump try to make a play for union voters.

The vice president spoke at an event held by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) on Thursday, where she thanked the teachers’ union for its longstanding support of her political career. She shouted out Randi Weingarten, the group’s president, as one of her oldest political allies, while calling herself a proud product of the public school system.

And outside of the AFT, Harris has racked up endorsements from other major national unions as well. Not waiting for another Democrat to emerge and challenge the vice president for the nomination, a slew of other unions including AFSCME, AFL-CIO and SEIU have all thrown their support behind Harris since Joe Biden stepped aside on Sunday.

Biden’s endorsement of his vice president for the Democratic nomination clearly played into this at least somewhat — the incumbent president has championed unions while in office, and throughout his own career. But there are also signs that even with Biden off the ticket, Democrats see Harris as a strong ally of organized labor.

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The clearest example of that dynamic to occur so far was visible on Wednesday. As speculation mounts that he is on the shortlist to be Kamala Harris’s running mate, battleground Arizona Senator Mark Kelly made a public flip-flop on the issue of the PRO Act, a piece of pro-union legislation he refused to back under a Democratic House and Senate majority in 2021, effectively blocking it from becoming law at the time.

“I've always said I would vote for the PRO Act, and at the same time we're going to try to make it better,” he told The Independent.

Kelly sought to highlight his union bona fides when he spoke on Capitol Hill on Thursday.

“Both my parents are police officers, my grandfather was a New York City firefighter,” Kelly said. “My mother was and after she was injured, on the job apprehending a criminal, it was the union that helped her get her benefits.”

Two of America’s most prominent unions are currently withholding their endorsements from the vice president: United Autoworkers (UAW) and the Teamsters. The latter’s position has been clear; Teamsters president Sean O’Brien has flirted openly with the Republican Party and spoke at the RNC last week ahead of JD Vance, the newly-announced running mate to Donald Trump who has sought to mend the GOP’s ties with organized labor groups (to mixed results).

The Teamsters’ political action committee also gave $5,000 to Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who has fashioned himself as a pro-labor Republican.

“I don't know if they will or not, but I would hope they would,” Hawley told The Independent, about whether any unions would back the GOP ticket. “And I would hope that, you know, the Trump-Vance ticket would continue to advocate for pro-labor policies.”

The UAW is far more likely to endorse Harris, though it may hold out for stronger pro-labor commitments from her campaign. Under the leadership of Shawn Fain, the UAW has played a militant strategy and organized numerous strikes including one major strike effort in 2023 which involved tens of thousands of workers.

“We’re not going to rush in and just throw it out there. We want to have fruitful discussions when we meet [with Harris’s team],” Fain said on MSNBC this week. “And I think it’s important we do that. We owe that to them.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told The Independent that Harris’s pro-labor record would help her.

“I think President Biden really broke a lot of barriers,” she said, noting how he was the first president to walk a picket line. “This type of solidarity with the labor movement has not been seen from any president, Democrat or Republican in a very long time. And so I'm very grateful to both President Biden and Vice President Harris for really taking that step and my hope is that it continues and only builds momentum.”

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AFT’s Randi Weingarten told The Independent after Harris’s visit on Thursday that her union was energized to rally behind the vice president’s bid for the top job. Since launching her campaign for the presidency on Sunday, Harris has raised more than $126m and signed up thousands of volunteers.

“The Vice President electrified our convention hall today with her message about expanding the middle class and protecting our freedoms. The AFT was the first union to endorse Kamala Harris for president because of her vision for the future. The excitement she generates among our members, particularly among women and young people is clear,” said Weingarten.

“Today, they heard the vice president champion our public schools and economic opportunity, families, reproductive freedoms, safety from gun violence, the freedom to join a union and a future in which every person has the opportunity not to just get by, but thrive. And they are committed to pouring all of their energy into helping her make history as the first woman president.”