Democrats and Unions – Mates or Frenemies?

The president of the USA and his entourage trekked to Lanham, Maryland, yesterday, Feb. 15, to deal with the Worldwide Brotherhood of Electrical Employees, Native 26. Union members served because the backdrop for Mr. Biden’s new financial plan, through which he spelled out a “imaginative and prescient to develop the economic system, decrease prices, and reward work, not wealth.” All through his prolonged political profession as senator, vice chairman, and now president, Biden has usually used organized labor for these messages. He’s maybe the all-time champion of this basic ploy through which Democrats exploit union members as an archetypal step-and-repeat. However are the rank-and-file nonetheless consuming the Democrat’s Kool-Help, or are they getting a mite uninterested in being recycled as human props for political guarantees and pledges?

Democrats Trot Out Lunch Bucket Joe

Even the bible of the progressive left complained loudly in 2020 about how the Democrats have mistreated labor. In an article for The Nation, writer Paul Blest flatly said: “The Democratic Get together will hold betraying labor.” He added, “The association isn’t working for unions.” Blest insightfully assessed the connection between the get together and arranged labor:

“…the Democratic Get together has ostensibly been the get together for staff. And but its alliance with labor has at all times been certainly one of conflicts and contradictions—first with the anti-union, anti-civil-rights efforts of the Democrats within the Jim Crow South and extra not too long ago because the get together embraced corporatism.”

The electoral image isn’t precisely the shiny object it as soon as was for this dysfunctional relationship between the Dems and unions. A surprising New York Occasions exit ballot following Election 2020 revealed Donald Trump walked away with a “double-digit” victory amongst union households “in Wisconsin and Michigan,” in line with The Nation. That’s an actual uh-oh for the Democrats, who had seemingly perfected the artwork of pandering to large labor.

Nonetheless, this political marriage has been degrading for some time now. In 2013, Daniel Schlozman of John Hopkins College famous, “Unions present votes, cash, and volunteer time, and Democrats provide coverage advantages after they take workplace. This partnership is usually taken without any consideration.” Indisputably, labor unions are the lifeblood of the Democratic Get together. Nonetheless, one wonders if the natives are starting to get lost the reservation as a result of they’ve little to point out for his or her allegiance to the person. Since 2010, unions have coughed up $1.3 billion to the Dems and different progressive teams, in line with a Heart for Union Information report. However the query stays: Are they getting sufficient bang for his or her buck?

“Union management supplies a dependable ATM for the Democratic Get together and liberal particular curiosity teams throughout the nation, whether or not workers agree or not,” Heart for Union Information spokesman Luka Ladan informed the Washington Examiner, including, “union officers have ‘exploited’ their members.” The Worker Rights Act – which has been languishing in legislative purgatory for lo these a few years – is a Republican-led effort that might put the employee again within the driver’s seat by requiring union bosses to get written permission from the rank and file earlier than they’re allowed to fork over member dues to political entities.

Lunch Bucket Benedict Arnold

It’s greater than seemingly the president enjoys the moniker “Lunch Bucket Joe.” He’s quoted as saying, “The very best place for me to be my complete profession is surrounded by organized labor. And I understand how to say ‘union.’” Nonetheless, in terms of unions, he has turn out to be a grasp poseur, as Gabriel Winant of The Guardian identified: “Biden’s not a scion of wealth, however he grew up within the center class: his father was a used-car salesman, not a manufacturing unit employee.”

Biden cultivates this picture as simply one other blue-collar man, however when the rubber meets the highway, he’ll dump the union in a New York minute if it will get in the best way of his political aspirations. The newest instance was his throughout tenure as president, when he caught it to the Railroad Employees Union. Livid, Union treasurer Hugh Sawyer wrote:

“He [Biden] had the chance to show his labor-friendly pedigree to tens of millions of staff by merely asking Congress for laws to finish the specter of a nationwide strike on phrases extra favorable to staff. Sadly, he couldn’t carry himself to advocate for a awful handful of sick days.”

Mr. Biden’s actions reveal him because the Benedict Arnold of US labor unions. In 2011, he was silent and sunning within the Hamptons throughout a Verizon strike. Later that yr, when labor leaders begged him to rescue them from the hand of then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, he was a no-show. He additionally supported the unfriendly-to-labor Trans-Pacific Partnership and voted for the laws that actually broke the again of American industrial unions – NAFTA.

Indisputably, Mr. Biden talks a great sport in terms of organized labor and vows to be the “most pro-union president” in American historical past. However the unions don’t have a lot to point out for the time, expertise, and treasure that they’ve generously offered the Democratic Get together. Organized labor has the again of the Democrats – however does their fearless chief have the again of the unions? An unbalanced relationship like this will solely final so lengthy earlier than one of many events recordsdata for divorce.