What’s Disgusting? Biden’s Union Busting

By Jim Miller

The most “pro-labor President in American history” isn’t.  

Joe Biden’s decision last week to ask Congress to impose the deal with the railroad companies he helped broker in September but was rejected by some of the rail unions, effectively took away the unions’ right to strike.  

It also shows that the mainstream of the Democratic Party still hasn’t learned some key lessons from its recent history.  As the Railroad Workers United Tweet bluntly put it “This is a legacy defining moment for Joe Biden. He is going down as one of the biggest disappointments in labor history.”  

As Hamilton Nolan wrote in the Guardian:

• People will point out that strikes are disruptive. Yes. That’s the point. A rail strike would be so disruptive that the rail companies probably would have given up the sick days to prevent it – and if they didn’t, the White House could have weighed in on the side of the workers to make them. Instead, it did the opposite, and rescuing hope for those workers fell to Bernie Sanders and to progressives in the House, who forced congressional leaders to move a separate bill to guarantee the sick leave they were asking for. As usual, it was the left that went to the trouble of fighting for labor after the party’s mainstream sold it out for the sake of convenience . . . 

• Organized labor is in an abusive relationship with the Democratic party. For decades, Democratic administrations have failed to prioritize labor issues and stabbed unions in the back, and the union establishment has always showed up with a big check for them in the next election. I guarantee you that this will happen again after this betrayal by Joe Biden. 

More specifically, as another Guardian piece on the Biden push noted: 

• [U]nion leaders are unhappy that Biden’s solution appears to be the imposition of a settlement reached in September that has already been rejected by many for failing to address members’ concerns about pay, sick days, staff shortages and time off.

• “Joe Biden blew it,” said Hugh Sawyer, treasurer of Railroad Workers United, a group representing workers from a variety of rail unions and carriers. “He had the opportunity to prove his labor-friendly pedigree to millions of workers by simply asking Congress for legislation to end the threat of a national strike on terms more favorable to workers. Sadly, he could not bring himself to advocate for a lousy handful of sick days. The Democrats and Republicans are both pawns of big business and the corporations.”

Robert Reich, echoed the workers’ concerns last week as he chided Biden in a Tweet: observing that, “Joe, if you're going to have Congress intervene in this rail strike, demand that railroad companies improve the deal and guarantee paid sick days for workers. Otherwise, let the workers organize to fight for the rights they deserve. This should be a no-brainer.”

Some in Congress following the lead of Senator Bernie Sanders tried to heed Reich’s advice with the House passing two bills, one imposing the settlement and another adding 7 new sick days to the deal.  Predictably, when the sick leave bill was decoupled from the other measure imposing the settlement, it died, failing to make the necessary 60-vote threshold.  Thus, the man who proclaimed himself to be labor’s biggest ally, was happy to throw the workers under the bus to avert any economic blowback the strike may have produced.  

It was a profile in political cowardice.   

If you want to understand why rightwing populism has taken hold in large segments of America’s formerly solid labor-Democratic strongholds, you need to look no further than this sort of short-sighted action.  

If the Democrats have any hopes of regaining a more robust share of working-class votes, this is precisely the opposite of what needs to be done.  Like embracing neoliberal policies, pushing for NAFTA and other bad trade deals, and NEVER coming through with big legislation to help labor, this betrayal by Biden is simply another example of how far the Democratic establishment has fallen as a champion of workers since the halcyon days of the New Deal.  

In the immediate aftermath, as the New York Times reported, union leaders were already hearing from members about why they had been encouraged to vote for Biden over Trump.  

The failure of Bernie Sanders and his allies in the Senate to usher through the sick days bill confirms the railroad workers’ assessment of Biden’s legacy.  This will surely come to haunt a feckless Democratic Party unable to stand up to greedy corporate interests even when doing so would help their political prospects with disaffected working-class voters.  

It might also be harder to rally an army of union activists like those who helped win the decisive Senate seat in Nevada and those currently knocking on doors in Georgia to show up for a party that, as Hamilton Nolan observed, “knifed them in the back.”  

As Jeff Kurtz of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen put it, "Joe Biden is so far from pro-labor that he couldn't see it with the James Webb Telescope."

Lead image: David Lassen