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By Mark Gruenberg
HARRISBURG, Pa.—With AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka beaming while looking on, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden used a Labor Day joint Zoom appearance to reiterate his strong and public pitch to unionists to support him in this fall’s election.
“If there’s one thing the pandemic has done, it’s made people realize you’re the people who keep America going,” he declared. “Wall Street did not build this country. You did. And now people finally get it.”
“I’ve never been afraid to say the word ‘union.’…You’ll hear it in the White House” if he wins the presidency away from current Republican occupant Donald Trump. And Biden made it clear that worker rights, and specifically pro-worker labor law reform, would be a top legislative priority of the Biden presidency.
Whether he can achieve that is another matter. To some extent, it depends on factors outside Biden’s control should he win the White House, including intense business and ideological campaigning against it—as occurred a decade ago—and whether Biden keeps the cause on his front burner.
As Barack Obama’s vice president, and at Obama’s request, he pushed that labor law reform, the Employee Free Choice Act, aside in favor of lobbying lawmakers to enact the Affordable Care Act....
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