Labor bosses have marched in union cities arm in arm with presidents on Labor Day for decades, but this may be the first time that the movement feels it has its strongest ally in history.
“He’s the most pro-union president,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler on Thursday, days before she joins President Joe Biden on Labor Day. She also called Biden’s team “the most pro-union administration in history.”
Speaking with reporters at a traditional pre-Labor Day roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, Shuler said, “President Biden, who is a Democrat, has been very much a pro-union president, so we are proud of the track record that he has had and his administration has had. And that translates down at every level.”
Shuler, recently elected the first woman to be president of the union, said Biden has quickly become a partner in labor’s bid to add 100,000 new members a year to the already 15 million members in the United States.
She cited efforts by the administration to force the government to hire labor workers, change laws to favor union organizing, and look at new rules and regulations from the “view” of workers.
Still, she said, the two sometimes knock heads over policies. “We hold him accountable,” she said. “I don’t think that gets covered as much.”
Shuler came into the job unexpectedly when former President Richard Trumka died during a camping trip a year ago.
She has brought a different approach to the job, one that has fit nicely with the post-COVID-19 labor landscape, which focuses as much on job conditions such as telecommuting as traditional issues of wages and healthcare.
Shuler told reporters that younger workers approach labor concerns and organizing differently than older assembly line employees, saying it’s her job to show them why unions can matter.
“It’s showing people who have old stereotypes about unions that unions are for everyone,” she said. “And I think there has been, you know, a long-standing view that ‘Oh, unions were relevant back when, you know, we had a manufacturing economy and people worked in unsafe conditions, but now we have laws we don’t need unions,’ which is absolutely not true.”
“Most young people had never even heard of a union. A lot of people don’t know someone in a union — they don’t know what they are, how to form one. So that’s our challenge is to take the 71% of people who are favorable and translate that into the ability for people to join unions and actually make a difference in whatever workplace they’re in,” Shuler said.
