Two months into the new administration, labor leaders are
proclaiming Joe Biden to be the most union-friendly president of their lifetime
— and “maybe ever,” as Steve Rosenthal, a former political director for The American
Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) , said
in an interview.
اضافة اعلان
Biden has moved quickly to oust government officials whom unions
deemed hostile to labor, and to reverse Trump-era rules that weakened worker
protections. He has pushed through legislation sending hundreds of billions of
dollars to cities and states, aid that public-sector unions consider essential,
and tens of billions to shore up union pension plans.
Perhaps most notably, the president appeared in a video alluding
to a union vote underway at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama, warning that “there
should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda” —
an unusually outspoken move by a president in a standard union election.
Yet Rosenthal and other labor advocates confess to a gnawing
anxiety: Despite Biden’s remarkable support for their movement, unions may not
be much better off when he leaves office than when he entered it.
That is because labor law gives employers considerable power to
fend off union organizing, which is one reason that union membership has sunk
to record lows in recent decades. And Senate Republicans will seek to thwart
any legislative attempts — such as the PRO Act, which the House passed this
month — to reverse the trend.
“The PRO Act is vital,” Rosenthal said. “But what happens now in
terms of Republicans in Congress, the Senate filibuster, is anyone’s guess.”
Until recently, it was far from clear that Biden would govern in
such a union-friendly way. Though he has long promoted the benefits of unions
and cited close relationships with labor leaders, the president has also
maintained ties to corporate figures like Steve Ricchetti, a counselor to the
president who was a lobbyist for companies including AT&T and Eli Lilly.
Biden voted over the years for free-trade agreements that unions opposed.
Then there is the fact that he served as vice president in an
administration that sometimes annoyed unions, as when President Barack Obama
weighed in on behalf of a school district in Rhode Island that fired the
faculty of an underperforming school. Biden also captained an Obama administration
team that negotiated with Republicans over deficit reduction, an effort that
raised hackles within labor.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden’s allies and
advisers argued that he had merely acted as a loyal deputy to his boss, and that
he would prove more in sync with labor as president.
But for many in labor who had doubts, Biden has exceeded
expectations. Shortly after his swearing-in as president, the White House asked
for the resignation of the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel,
Peter B. Robb, whose office enforces the labor rights of private-sector
employees.
Robb was deeply unpopular with organized labor, which viewed him
as overly friendly to management. His term was set to expire in November, and
presidents of both parties have allowed general counsels to serve out their
time in office.
But with no letter of resignation from Robb forthcoming on
Inauguration Day, the White House fired him.
“What was really promising and exciting to those of us who care
was the firing of Peter Robb and the dramatic way it came down,” said Lisa
Canada, the political and legislative director for Michigan’s state carpenters
union.
“Because of growing
inequality, our economy is on a trajectory to implosion,” said Richard Trumka,
president of the AFL-CIO. The PRO Act “will
increase wages and slow that trajectory,” he added.
Under current law, employers can inundate workers with
anti-union messages — through mandatory meetings, email, signs in the workplace
— while unions often have trouble gaining access to workers. And though it is
technically illegal to threaten or fire workers who take part in an organizing
campaign, employers face minimal punishment for doing so.
Labor board cases can drag on for years, after which an employer
frequently must only post a notice promising to abide by labor law in the
future, said Wilma B. Liebman, a former board chairwoman. There are no monetary
penalties for such violations, though workers can be made whole through back
pay.
The PRO Act would outlaw mandatory anti-union meetings, enact
financial penalties for threatening or firing workers and help wrongly
terminated workers win quick reinstatement. It would also give unions leverage
by allowing them to engage in secondary boycotts — say, asking customers to
boycott restaurants that buy food from a bakery they are trying to unionize.
Glenn Spencer, a senior vice president at the US Chamber of
Commerce, criticized the bill as “a radical rewrite of labor law” and said the
provision on secondary boycotts could be highly disruptive for their targets.
“Those companies don’t have anything to do with the nature of
the labor dispute, but they’re suddenly wrapped up in it,” Spencer said.
Even with the legal protections envisioned under the PRO Act,
however, it will be hard for unions to make large-scale gains in coverage, many
experts say. Labor law often effectively requires workers to win union
elections one work site at a time, which could mean hundreds of separate
elections at Amazon alone.
The system is “optimized to build weak labor movements,” said
David Rolf, a former vice president of the Service Employees International
Union, who favors industrywide unions and bargaining.
And the PRO Act’s chances for enactment are remote so long as
opponents have recourse to the Senate filibuster, which effectively requires 60
votes to pass legislation.
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