Wayne O'Leary

Labor’s Moment

At long last, “Union Joe” Biden’s pro-labor actions seem to have caught up to his pro-labor rhetoric. By joining the striking United Auto Workers’ (UAW) picket line against the Big Three auto companies (Ford, General Motors and Stellantis), he’s achieved the distinction of becoming the first US.president to literally march with militant workers.

It’s really about time. Biden’s friendly rival Bernie Sanders has long been turning up in person to support the embattled ranks of organized labor. Of course, Biden is president, and that makes a difference; traditionally, chief executives maintain a certain distance in these matters, but that posture is not carved in stone. The times demand more aggressive leadership from the White House, and Biden has chosen to provide it, whether out of conviction or political realism is not important at this point. People are on the march, and their leader better get ahead of them or be trampled.

By putting the prestige of the executive branch on the line, Joe Biden has set a precedent and placed himself almost on a par with Franklin Roosevelt as a labor president. FDR still has the edge by virtue of the seminal legislation he signed on behalf of workers in the 1930s, principally the National Labor Relations (or Wagner) Act of 1935, which guaranteed employees the right to organize and collectively bargain, and limited unfair labor practices by employers through establishment of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The Wagner Act essentially legalized labor unions in this country — they had been extralegal entities until then — and led to the greatest period of union-membership growth in American history, with a tripling of the number of unionized workers by World War II. Joe Biden has accomplished nothing like this, of course. The Protecting the Right to Organize (or PRO) Act he endorsed, a weak updating of the Wagner Act, would have at least outlawed mandatory antiunion propaganda meetings by employers, strengthened the NLRB, and permitted secondary boycotts in support of strikes, among other things; it went nowhere in the last Congress. But Biden has unquestionably done more for labor than the previous two Democratic presidents, Clinton and Obama, with his pro-labor rhetorical flourishes and superior appointments to the NLRB.

It can be argued that Union Joe is merely reacting to the prevailing public mood, illustrated by an August Gallup poll showing 67% of Americans now view unions favorably. (After all, he did undercut the railway workers’ strike barely a year ago.). If so, the president is doing what any intelligent and perceptive politician should do, especially one from the Democratic side of the aisle. If, on the other hand, he’s acting out of heartfelt conviction, so much the better. Either way, workers will gladly accept the help.

At any rate, it’s apparent the labor movement is having, as they say, a moment. A brief personal perusal of news items since 2021 uncovered organizing efforts and job actions, including strikes, affecting at least 15 US companies, as follows: Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft, Google, Condé Nast, Apple, Trader Joe’s, HarperCollins, Chipotle, Activision, REI, Tesla, Kellogg, Deere & Company, and Nabisco. This does not include the two ongoing high-profile work stoppages that have garnered the most media attention — the UAW’s aforementioned autoworkers’ strike and the combined SAG-AFTRA/Writers Guild of America walkout against Hollywood entertainment moguls and their production studios. (The writers strike was victoriously resolved Sept. 26.)

Of all of these, the UAW strike, involving one of the country’s most forward-looking and socially conscious unions, is the most symbolically important. Those familiar with labor history will recall it was the UAW, led by the great Walter Reuther, that first organized the auto industry in 1937 using the novel tactic of the sit-down strike, thereby becoming the vanguard for a revitalized union movement nationwide.

Today’s Walter Reuther is Shawn Fain, the new UAW president elected earlier this year in an upset victory over the union establishment. He’s part of a rising cadre of vocal labor leaders that have lately moved into positions of power and begun refusing to take “no” as an answer from corporate management; SAG-AFTRA’s Fran Drescher is another of the breed. It’s an indication that the worm has turned so far as labor-management relations in America are concerned. Joe Biden and other centrist Democrats have belatedly come to a realization of this fact.

It’s presently unclear how the UAW strike will ultimately play out, but one thing is obvious: there are more such confrontations in the offing. This is the case because the foremost figures of America’s billionaire ownership class, especially Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla’s Elon Musk, have chosen to actively stand in the way of labor-organizing drives, making them existential contests of will. Musk, in particular, has set himself up as the Henry Ford of this generation (in an employer sense), digging in to stop union penetration of his factories at all costs.

In the 1930s, the Ford Motor Company stood out as the last bastion of antiunion resistance in the auto industry, using threats, intimidation and strike breakers to achieve its ends. Henry Ford himself, fanatically opposed to collective bargaining, indirectly authorized the bloody beating of UAW strikers at the company’s River Rouge, Michigan, plant in 1937, a confrontation made famous in union lore as “the battle of the overpass.” Eventually, Ford was forced to relent; the company is considerably more forthcoming in contract negotiations these days, but no less tightfisted.

Elon Musk, however, has no appreciation of labor history; he’s set about emulating Henry Ford by illegally firing Tesla employees for organizing activity, prompting workers to file protests with the NLRB. The arrogant, flamboyant Musk, who’s increasingly becoming the reactionary face of antiunion sentiment in corporate America, is emerging as the labor movement’s perfect foil, heaven-sent for future UAW organizing efforts at Tesla.

All this leaves Joe Biden in an enviable political position, assuming he follows through with labor and doesn’t allow his appearance on the picket line to be a momentary “one-off” PR gambit in search of a union presidential endorsement. Republicans are cooperating. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) says strikers of any description should be summarily fired. Former Governor Nikki Haley (R-S.C.) says unions will only demand more and more, if foolishly encouraged.

Now, if Union Joe will only resuscitate the dormant PRO and Employee Free Choice acts. That would really be meaningful.

Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2023

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