The White House, meanwhile, was conducting a legal review to ensure that any statement was consistent with the president’s commitment to maintaining independence from the National Council for Labor Relations. Authorities did not say when the review was completed. Yet, Klain privately indicated last week that he intended to introduce the president in a video message. External pressure for Biden to become engaged only grew from there.
Finally, at the end of Sunday, the president released the 2 ½ minute video. Although he omitted the name of the powerful e-commerce giant, his comments were seen as an unmistakable show of solidarity with a labor movement that has failed to guarantee anything similar to its recent predecessors.
“This is the most pro-union statement by a president in the history of the United States,” Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, told POLITICO. “The workers understand who he is talking to. This is a clear message and has been interpreted as such by workers, observers and the media ”.
Statements are one thing. Reversing the realities surrounding the death of organized work is quite another. After decades of steady decline in union membership, the influence of labor in Washington has diminished significantly. Biden’s refusal to name Amazon, a powerful company that contributed to his ownership and pledged to help his government fight the Covid-19 pandemic, has not gone unnoticed by Democrats and labor activists.
But union leaders said they believed the omission was intentional. By not explicitly telling workers to vote “yes” to the union, leaders say Biden was promoting the ideals of the National Labor Relations Act by allowing workers to decide for themselves whether or not to join a union.
“Biden is fighting for the workers, he is not fighting any specific company,” Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said in an interview. Brown said it was obvious that Biden’s statement was aimed at the election of Alabama. “Amazon executives understand this. Executives in my state understand. I always take the side of the workers and Biden’s reputation is more and more that he is on the side of the workers ”.
It is unclear how much Biden’s video will really have about undecided workers at the Amazon plant. Biden’s comments came more than half the seven-week election to determine whether workers should be represented by RWDSU, raising concerns among some close to the process about how much the president would be able to move the needle. There is also the issue of Alabama being a state with the right to work, which means that even if Amazon’s union campaign is successful, workers at the Bessemer distribution center can choose not to be members, effectively weakening any union created. .
“Many workers voted,” noted Chelsea Connor, director of communications for the warehouse union. “For workers, the focus now is to get all of their colleagues to vote.”
Appelbaum, the president of RWDSU, added that many of those who did not vote are probably still undecided. “We are now building support for the entire facility,” he said. “People will send ballots for the next four weeks.”
Biden’s decision to move forward publicly in the name of a union impulse, particularly at a time when the private sector organization is struggling to maintain itself, marked a major change in the way presidential governments dealt with labor policy.
Labor historians believe that the last time a president showed so much support for a union campaign was in 1944, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the seizure of Montgomery Ward’s properties after the merchandising giant repeatedly refused to comply with labor agreements. signed with the RWDSU. Before a federal judge could decide on the legality of the move, the union concluded its election and employees went back to work.
During Obama’s years, however, the president routinely disappointed union activists by avoiding major fights, even after he has pledged himself as a candidate to follow the pickets. Biden made similar promises on the trail, but signaled that he intends to remain more faithful to them while in office.
“This is different for a president. But it’s consistent for Joe Biden, ”said Faiz Shakir, a former aide to Senator Bernie Sanders and founder of More Perfect Union, who is helping with Amazon’s union effort and communicating with the White House. “This was a great opportunity for him and the first big step in speaking.”
Deputy Andy Levin (D-Mich.), One of the first officials to approach Biden’s team on Alabama, said he asked advisers to “understand the gravity of the moment”. Union elections with about 6,000 workers are increasingly rare, partly because workers do not have the kind of protection that Levin has been advocating in Congress.
“If these workers manage to do this, it will be the 21st century David and Goliath in American labor relations,” said Levin, who strongly criticized Amazon’s campaign tactics and plans to travel to Alabama this week to support workers. “We haven’t seen a president like that. Just forget that I am a member of Congress, ”added Levin, a former AFL-CIO official and a former member of the Labor Law Reform Commission during Bill Clinton. “I’m really touched by this.”
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants Union, said that even if Biden’s message did not tip the balance in the election, it “changes everything”.
“This message was not just about Bessemer, it was not just about this Amazon store. It was about workers’ rights everywhere, ”said Nelson. She added that in announcing the benefits of joining a union, Biden is also building support for his labor agenda – which calls for a broad overhaul of federal labor law that would make it much easier for workers to form unions.
And AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is using the new message from the president to advocate for the rapid approval of the Democratic Organizations Right to Organize Law. If passed, the measure would be the first bill to revise labor rights since the 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, which banned some organizational tactics and allowed states to enact labor law laws. The new bill, among other things, would extend collective bargaining rights to workers, overturn state labor rights laws and allow the federal labor council to impose penalties against companies that violate federal labor laws. Biden, Trumka wrote in a statement on Monday, “proved that you are willing to speak and stay with us. Now it’s time to follow the words with action. “
The mere fact that Biden’s statement came as a video was also not a small deal for unions that prefer the format as a tool to gather support between the grassroots. In fact, outside allies have been using videos to reach workers, including digital ads targeted at Bessemer that feature Sanders.
Biden’s action may ease the nascent fears that the Democratic Party is losing touch with workers, especially on issues of trade and immigration. He promised to find a way to approve the $ 15 minimum wage and also supported the Pro Act, the long wish list of union priorities strongly contested by businessmen and Republicans.
While labor leaders hope their comments bode well for this project, they also say it is refreshing to have a president who feels comfortable speaking his language. On a recent visit to the Oval office, Brown said he stopped Biden to give him a message.
“I said, ‘I really appreciate that,'” Brown told Biden. “As a candidate and as a president, he freely uses the word ‘union’. Many candidates did not do this. Most presidents did not do that ”.