As the election mercifully draws to a close, I’ve been tracking the polls to see how Kamala Harris is doing with union voters in swing states and nationally. Here’s what I found:As the chart above shows, since 2008, union voters have been edging away from the Democratic Party in many swing states. Of immediate concern, Harris appears to be trailing Joe Biden’s level of union support in crucial swing states like Michigan and Nevada and hovering at 50% in Pennsylvania.
What is driving Harris’s troubling lack of union support (if the polls are to be believed)? While some media reports have suggested that it may be motivated by racism and sexism within labor’s ranks, I would be surprised if it is any worse than the general population of voters (and unions tend to promote higher tolerance and reduce gender and racial pay gaps).
Another line of thought outlined in a provocative article by Eric Levitz at Vox (paywalled, but worth $5) argues that “the Democrats’ pro-union strategy has been a bust.”
[T]o prevent Democrats’ working-class support from diminishing further, the thinking went, the party needed to deliver for existing trade unions. . . . The Biden administration appears to have embraced this analysis. In his presidency’s first major piece of legislation, Biden bailed out the Teamsters’ pension funds, effectively transferring $36 billion to 350,000 of the union’s members. The president also appointed a staunchly pro-union federal labor board, encouraged union organizing at Amazon, walked a picket line with the United Auto Workers, and aligned Democratic trade and education policy with the AFL-CIO’s preferences. And although he failed to enact major changes to federal labor regulations, that was not for want of trying. In the estimation of labor historian Erik Loomis, Biden has been the most pro-union president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Levitz concludes, however, that “the political return…
La suite est à lire sur: jacobin.com
Auteur: Chris Bohner
