Labor union support rolls in for Harris — but with notable holdouts

Vice President Harris is locking down support from organized labor after the withdrawal of President Biden, but a few powerful unions are still on the fence, drawing some rancorous criticism.

Union support could help Harris make inroads with working class voters in the seven crucial swing states that will play an outsized role in determining the outcome of the presidential election.

While more than a half-dozen national labor organizations have endorsed Harris, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and United Auto Workers (UAW) — two unions with big presences in key swing states — have yet to back her as the Democratic nominee. 

Harris served with Biden as he sought to be the “most pro-union president ever” amid a swell of labor activity driven by a surge in the cost of living following the pandemic. Whether she can unite organized labor behind her could be crucial to securing the Democratic nomination and the White House.

Union endorsements for Harris have come in so far from such major unions as the 1.9 million-member Service Employees International Union, the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers, and the 700,000-member Communications Workers of America, among others.

The AFL-CIO, which is the nation’s largest labor federation with 12.5 million members across 60 different unions, also endorsed Harris Monday night, calling her a “tenacious fighter for working people.”

“With Kamala Harris in the White House, together we’ll continue to build on the powerful legacy of the Biden-Harris administration to create good union jobs, grow the labor movement and make our economy work for all of us,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a Monday statement.

The United Steelworkers (USW) union also endorsed Harris Tuesday evening, with USW President David McCall calling her “a crucial part of the most pro-labor administration of our lifetimes.”

But amid the cascade of union support, the lack of endorsement from the 1.4 million-member Teamsters, the 3 million-member National Education Association teachers’ union, and the 400,000-member UAW, whose president, Shawn Fain, was joined on a picket line last year by President Biden, is resonant.

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien broke from tradition last week in Milwaukee to speak at the Republican National Convention, where he lavished praise on former President Trump, calling him a “tough S.O.B.” after an unsuccessful assassination attempt was made on Trump’s life. 

However, O’Brien’s reception at the convention was mixed as he called out past GOP opposition to organized labor agendas.

“The Teamsters and the GOP may not agree on many issues,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien praised Republican Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) during his speech for his support of railroad workers and has also praised Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), for his stances on various labor issues.

“JD Vance, the short time that we’ve worked together, he’s been great on Teamster issues,” O’Brien told Fox News earlier this month, praising Vance’s positions on an airline manufacturing bill and a type of independent contractor employment arrangement.

The warm words from O’Brien toward Republicans, who have never before hosted a Teamsters president at one of their national conventions, have drawn some smoldering criticism from detractors.

The slogans “International Brotherhood of Trumpsters,” “Sean O’Brien is a Class Traitor,” and “Trump Stand Your Butt Up So O’Brien Can Kiss Your Ass” were projected onto the exterior of Teamster headquarters in Washington on Monday night.

Fain, who has done more than perhaps any other labor leader to bolster President Biden’s image as a pro-union president, has also sent some mixed signals following Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race.

The UAW chief said Monday that his union was going to take its time before moving formally to endorse another candidate.

“We’re looking at a lot of things right now,” Fain told MSNBC host Jen Psaki, a former Biden press secretary. “We have our team looking at other people, not as, I don’t believe as, presidential candidates, but as other possible vice president candidates, and things like that.”

The UAW has played politics with their endorsement before, notably withholding their initial recommendation in 2023 for Joe Biden's candidacy in order to win greater worker benefits as part of the transition to electric vehicles (EV).

“The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom. We want to see national leadership have our back on this before we make any commitments,” Fain said in a 2023 memo.

After joining the UAW president on a picket line last September, Fain eventually gave his union's endorsement to Biden at the beginning of this year.

Labor experts say that there’s a good deal of political diversity within organized labor and that prematurely handing out endorsements can risk alienating portions of union membership.

“The numbers vary on who you ask, but it’s somewhere between 25 and 45 percent in the labor movement, especially for the UAW and Teamsters, [that] are Republican,” Arthur Wheaton, a director of labor studies at Cornell University's Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) School, told The Hill.

Wheaton said that Republican appointees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which administers a significant portion of U.S. labor law, have tended to be less favorable to organized labor in recent decades than Democratic appointees.

“The NLRB unfortunately tends to flow with the Democratic or the Republican Party, so it swings back and forth on whether it’s more pro-labor or anti-labor. That wasn’t always the case, but it has been the case in the last 20 or 30 years. President Trump appointed antiunion management types who were more interested in lowering the power of the unions than they were in building them up,” he said.

While a minority of the American workforce remains unionized, postpandemic inflation has coincided with both a surge in labor activity and a rise in the popularity of unions among Americans.

In 2022, as inflation hit a 9-percent annual increase, 71 percent of Americans approved of labor unions, the highest number since 1965. In 2023, that number dipped slightly to 67 percent.

The summer of 2023 was informally dubbed the “summer of strikes” as numerous labor actions kicked off across the country, involving a host of different industries including transportation, nursing, entertainment and manufacturing.

Researchers at Cornell's ILR school documented 470 work stoppages involving about 539,000 workers last year. The stoppages resulted in the equivalent of 25 million strike days.

The number of work stoppages jumped by about 9 percent between 2022 and 2023, though the number of workers involved increased by about 141 percent, ILR data shows.

"This increase was primarily due to large, high-profile strikes including the SAG-AFTRA strike, the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions strike, the Los Angeles Unified School District strike, and the UAW Stand-Up Strike," Cornell labor analysts said in an annual summary.

Official data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is less comprehensive, but shows the number of stoppages starting in 2023 increasing to the highest level since 2000. Days of idleness in 2023 represented 0.04 percent of total working time.