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    Why Biden May Not Be Able to Save Unions

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    Labor leaders are effusive in praising the new president, but experts worry that he may be powerless to reverse unions’ long-term decline.Two months into the new administration, labor leaders are proclaiming Joseph R. Biden Jr. to be the most union-friendly president of their lifetime — and “maybe ever,” as Steve Rosenthal, a former political director for the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said in an interview.Mr. Biden has moved quickly to oust government officials whom unions deemed hostile to labor, and to reverse Trump-era rules that weakened worker protections. He has pushed through legislation sending hundreds of billions of dollars to cities and states, aid that public-sector unions consider essential, and tens of billions to shore up union pension plans.Perhaps most notably, the president appeared in a video alluding to a union vote underway at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama, warning that “there should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda” — an unusually outspoken move by a president in a standard union election.Yet Mr. Rosenthal and other labor advocates confess to a gnawing anxiety: Despite Mr. Biden’s remarkable support for their movement, unions may not be much better off when he leaves office than when he entered it.That’s because labor law gives employers considerable power to fend off union organizing, which is one reason that union membership has sunk to record lows in recent decades. And Senate Republicans will seek to thwart any legislative attempts — such as the PRO Act, which the House passed this month — to reverse the trend.“The PRO Act is vital,” Mr. Rosenthal said. “But what happens now in terms of Republicans in Congress, the Senate filibuster, is anyone’s guess.”Until recently, it was far from clear that Mr. Biden would govern in such a union-friendly way. Though he has long promoted the benefits of unions and cited close relationships with labor leaders, the president has also maintained ties to corporate figures like Steve Ricchetti, a counselor to the president who was a lobbyist for companies including AT&T and Eli Lilly. Mr. Biden voted over the years for free-trade agreement that unions opposed.Then there is the fact that he served as vice president in an administration that sometimes annoyed unions, as when President Barack Obama weighed in on behalf of a school district in Rhode Island that fired the faculty of an underperforming school. Mr. Biden also captained an Obama administration team that negotiated with Republicans over deficit reduction, an effort that raised hackles within labor.During the 2020 presidential campaign, Mr. Biden’s allies and advisers argued that he had merely acted as a loyal deputy to his boss, and that he would prove more in sync with labor as president.But for many in labor who had doubts, Mr. Biden has exceeded expectations. Shortly after his swearing-in as president, the White House asked for the resignation of the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel, Peter B. Robb, whose office enforces the labor rights of private-sector employees.Mr. Robb was deeply unpopular with organized labor, which viewed him as overly friendly to management. His term was set to expire in November, and presidents of both parties have allowed general counsels to serve out their time in office.But with no letter of resignation from Mr. Robb forthcoming on Inauguration Day, the White House fired him.“What was really promising and exciting to those of us who care was the firing of Peter Robb and the dramatic way it came down,” said Lisa Canada, the political and legislative director for Michigan’s state carpenters union.Yet it is the Alabama video that most clearly highlights the differences between Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama on labor. When state workers flocked to Madison, Wis., in 2011 protesting Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to roll back their bargaining rights, union leaders pleaded with the White House to send a top administration official in solidarity. The White House declined, though Mr. Obama did say the plan seemed like “an assault on unions.”“We made every imaginable effort to get someone there,” said Larry Cohen, who was then president of the Communications Workers of America and is now chair of the progressive advocacy group Our Revolution. “They would not allow anyone to go.”Protesters at the Wisconsin State Capitol in 2011 opposed a bill curbing union bargaining rights. The Obama administration declined labor leaders’ pleas to send a representative.Darren Hauck/ReutersBy contrast, Mr. Biden seemed eager to offer his statement alluding to the Amazon election, which a number of labor leaders had urged him to deliver.“We haven’t seen this level of elected support for organizing since Franklin Roosevelt,” said Mr. Cohen, who expected the Amazon statement to discourage anti-union behavior among employers.Still, Mr. Cohen and other labor officials said that absent a change in labor law, union membership was likely to follow a path under Mr. Biden that was similar to the one it took under Mr. Obama, when the share of workers in unions dropped about 1.5 percentage points. Over all, union membership has fallen from about one-third of workers in the 1950s to just over one-tenth today, and a mere 6 percent in the private sector.“Because of growing inequality, our economy is on a trajectory to implosion,” said Richard Trumka, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., in an interview. The PRO Act “will increase wages and slow that trajectory,” he added.Under current law, employers can inundate workers with anti-union messages — through mandatory meetings, email, signs in the workplace — while unions often have trouble gaining access to workers. And though it is technically illegal to threaten or fire workers who take part in an organizing campaign, employers face minimal punishment for doing so.Labor board cases can drag on for years, after which an employer frequently must only post a notice promising to abide by labor law in the future, said Wilma B. Liebman, a former board chairwoman. There are no monetary penalties for such violations, though workers can be made whole through back pay.The PRO Act would outlaw mandatory anti-union meetings, enact financial penalties for threatening or firing workers and help wrongly terminated workers win quick reinstatement. It would also give unions leverage by allowing them to engage in secondary boycotts — say, asking customers to boycott restaurants that buy food from a bakery they are trying to unionize.Glenn Spencer, a senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, criticized the bill as “a radical rewrite of labor law” and said the provision on secondary boycotts could be highly disruptive for their targets.“Those companies don’t have anything to do with the nature of the labor dispute, but they’re suddenly wrapped up in it,” Mr. Spencer said.Even with the legal protections envisioned under the PRO Act, however, it will be hard for unions to make large-scale gains in coverage, many experts say. Labor law often effectively requires workers to win union elections one work site at a time, which could mean hundreds of separate elections at Amazon alone.The system is “optimized to build weak labor movements,” said David Rolf, a former vice president of the Service Employees International Union, who favors industrywide unions and bargaining.And the PRO Act’s chances for enactment are remote so long as opponents have recourse to the Senate filibuster, which effectively requires 60 votes to pass legislation.Labor organizers outside an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala. Mr. Biden appeared in a video alluding to the current union vote there and warning against anti-union efforts.Bob Miller for The New York TimesSenator Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, appeared before the executive council of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. this month to make the case for exempting certain types of legislation from the filibuster. In a statement after the meeting, the council members called for “swift and necessary changes” to Senate rules to remove the filibuster as an obstacle to progressive legislation.Mr. Biden has since indicated that he is open to weakening the filibuster, though it is not clear whether the PRO Act would benefit. Mr. Trumka said he was confident that Mr. Biden would seize the opportunity that Mr. Obama had let pass when Democrats enjoyed a large Senate majority but still failed to change labor law. “This president understands the power of solving inequalities through collective bargaining,” Mr. Trumka said.But others are skeptical that Mr. Biden, for all his outspokenness on behalf of unions, will be in a position to deliver.“The proof is in the pudding,” said Ruth Milkman, a sociologist of labor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. “We know where his heart is. It doesn’t mean anything will change.” More

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    John J. Sweeney, Crusading Labor Leader, Is Dead at 86

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJohn J. Sweeney, Crusading Labor Leader, Is Dead at 86As head of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., he embraced immigrants, women, minority groups and low-wage workers in an effort to reverse organized labor’s long decline.John J. Sweeney in 2005 after being re-elected president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. in Chicago. He was a force in helping Democrats, including Barack Obama, win elections.Credit…Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressFeb. 2, 2021Updated 2:10 p.m. ETJohn J. Sweeney, a New York union researcher who climbed to the pinnacle of the American labor movement in the 1990s, leading the A.F.L.-C.I.O. for 14 years through an era of fading union membership but rising political influence, died on Monday at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 86.Carolyn Bobb, an A.F.L.-C.I.O. spokeswoman, confirmed the death. She did not specify the cause.As president, from 1995 to 2009, of the nation’s largest labor federation — 56 unions with 10 million members near the end of his tenure — Mr. Sweeney flexed labor’s political muscle with thousands of volunteers and helped elect Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008. Over the years, he also helped elect Democrats to seats in Congress, to governorships and to state legislatures across the country.His tougher task, a quest to reinvigorate and diversify the faltering labor movement itself, had the weight of history pushing against him.For decades in the 20th century, labor had not welcomed women, African-Americans, Latinos or Asian-Americans, often engaging in blatantly discriminatory tactics to preserve the dominance of white men in the workplace. Substantial but uneven gains had been achieved since the civil rights era of the 1960s, when unions began removing “whites only” clauses from their constitutions and bylaws.But Mr. Sweeney, still facing lopsided demographics, plotted a sea change. He crusaded to bring women and minorities into the fold, often in leadership posts; made alliances with civil rights groups, students, college professors and the clergy; and championed low-wage workers, shifting away from the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s traditional emphasis on protecting the best-paid union jobs.Mr. Sweeney, center, after speaking at a union solidarity rally in Chicago in 2005. At right was his deputy, Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Behind him, at right, was his eventual successor, Richard L. Trumka. Credit…Brian Kersey/Associated PressIn Mr. Sweeney’s campaign for the federation presidency, his running mate, for the newly created post of executive vice president, was Linda Chavez-Thompson, a Texas sharecropper’s daughter. She was the first minority group member ever elected to organized labor’s top executive ranks.The 1995 balloting itself was unique: It was the first contested election in the history of the federation, which had been created in 1955 by a merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations after a long estrangement.A signature Sweeney initiative encouraged the recruitment of thousands of immigrants to his unions. Many members had long been hostile to undocumented workers, accusing them of stealing union jobs and dragging down wage scales. Mr. Sweeney rebuked such talk as discriminatory and called for justice that included better treatment for underpaid immigrants and a path to citizenship for those in the United States illegally.Critics contended that Mr. Sweeney’s policies were locked in a liberal past, deploying mid-20th century civil rights and blue-collar union strategies to organize 21st century workers with internet skills. Mr. Sweeney rejected that claim, just as he had rebuffed corporations that moved jobs overseas and denounced the hostilities that many young white-collar workers voiced toward old-line unions.In a labor movement that had been declining since 1979, when union membership peaked at 21 million, Mr. Sweeney prodded his constituent unions to greatly increase spending on organizing. He often said that his first priority was to reverse the long slide and substantially expand labor’s rank-and-file.Mr. Sweeney in 2005 at New York University in Manhattan during a protest by graduate assistants in a contract dispute. One of his priorities  was to expand labor’s rank-and-file.Credit…James Estrin/The New York TimesBut by 2009, when he stepped down, his vision of a dramatic unionization surge comparable to those of the late-Depression 1930s and the postwar ’40s had failed to materialize. In fact, overall union membership in America had fallen on his watch to about 12 percent from 15 percent of the workforce, a trend that has since continued, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.“Based on the optimism that supporters of the labor movement felt in 1995 when he was elected, I think it’s hard not to be disappointed with the results,” Richard W. Hurd, a professor of labor relations at Cornell University, told The New York Times in 2009. “How much of that you can trace back to John Sweeney is a whole other question.”In a departing interview with The Times in his Washington office — looking across Lafayette Park to the White House, where he had conferred with President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s and with Mr. Obama more recently — Mr. Sweeney spoke optimistically in the face of the Great Recession, which had been underway for more than a year and had already forced thousands of layoffs, further winnowing union ranks.“I think the recession is going to drive people to the conclusion that they can’t resolve their problems by themselves, and they have to look to organizing,” he said. And, noting that his father had been a unionized New York City bus driver, he drew a lesson from childhood.“Because of the union, my father got things like vacation days or a raise in wages,” he said. “But my mother, who worked as a domestic, had nobody. It taught me from a young age the difference between workers who are organized and workers who were by themselves.”Mr. Sweeney, left, was the incoming president of the Service Employees International Union in June 1980 when Senator Edward M. Kennedy (waving) spoke to its convention in New York. Mr. Kennedy was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. At right in the foreground was the outgoing union president, George Hardy.Credit…Associated PressJohn Joseph Sweeney was born in the Bronx on May 5, 1934, to James and Agnes Sweeney, Irish-Catholic immigrants whose struggles in America had shaped John’s social perceptions from an early age. The boy had accompanied his father to many union meetings, where he learned of class and workplace inequalities and of union efforts to improve wages and working conditions.He attended St. Barnabas Elementary School and graduated from Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx in 1952. Coming of age, he resolved to find a future in organized labor. He worked as a gravedigger and building porter (and joined his first union) to pay his way through Iona College, a Catholic school in New Rochelle, N.Y., where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1956.He worked briefly as a clerk for IBM but took a sharp pay cut to become a researcher for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in Manhattan. He met Thomas R. Donahue, a union rep for the Building Service Employees International Union, Local 32B, who persuaded him in 1960 to join his union as a contract director. Mr. Sweeney would face Mr. Donahue in a run for labor’s top job 35 years later.In 1962, Mr. Sweeney married Maureen Power, a schoolteacher. She survives him, along with their children, John Jr. and Patricia Sweeney; two sisters, Cathy Hammill and Peggy King; and a granddaughter.The building employees union was one of the most progressive of its day, representing 40,000 porters, doormen and maintenance workers in 5,000 commercial and residential buildings in New York City. Its contracts guaranteed pay raises, medical coverage, college scholarships for members’ children and requirements that employers hire and promote workers without regard to race, creed or color.Mr. Sweeney rose through the ranks, and in 1976 was elected president of Local 32B of the renamed Service Employees International Union. Soon his 45,000 members struck thousands of buildings for 17 days and won major wage and benefit increases. He later merged Local 32B with Local 32J, representing janitors, and in 1979 struck again for contract improvements.In 1980, he was elected president of the 625,000-member national S.E.I.U. and, moving his base to Washington, began merging with unions of public employees and workers in office jobs, health care and food services. He pushed for stronger federal laws for health and safety, and spent heavily to organize new members. By 1995, he represented 1.1 million union members and was a national power in the labor movement.Labor was at a crossroads. Years of rank-and-file frustration with Lane Kirkland, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. since 1979, boiled over in a revolt of union presidents in 1995. Mr. Kirkland, whose internationalist vision of labor had made him a hero to Poland’s Solidarity movement but had left him unmoved, even hostile, to proposed reforms for unions at home, was forced to resign.The 1995 election pitted Mr. Sweeney against Mr. Donahue, his old friend from Local 32B, who had risen to secretary-treasurer of the federation and was Mr. Kirkland’s heir apparent. But Mr. Donahue’s ties to Mr. Kirkland forced him to defend the status quo, and Mr. Sweeney’s progressive calls for growth and change won the presidency with 57 percent of the delegates, representing 7.2 million members.President Barack Obama presenting Mr. Sweeney with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010. Mr. Sweeney’s successor said, “John viewed his leadership as a spiritual calling, a divine act of solidarity in a world plagued by distance and division.”Credit…Charles Dharapak/Associated PressHe was re-elected to four more terms of two to four years each, the last time in 2005, when he broke a pledge not to remain in office beyond age 70. He retired in 2009, at 75, and was succeeded by Richard L. Trumka, his longtime secretary-treasurer and a former president of the United Mine Workers.In a statement posted on the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s website on Monday, Mr. Trumka said of Mr. Sweeney: “He was guided into unionism by his Catholic faith, and not a single day passed by when he didn’t put the needs of working people first. John viewed his leadership as a spiritual calling, a divine act of solidarity in a world plagued by distance and division.”Mr. Sweeney wrote a memoir, “Looking Back, Moving Forward: My Life in the American Labor Movement” (2017), and was the co-author of two books: “America Needs a Raise: Fighting for Economic Security and Social Justice” (1996, with David Kusnet) and “Solutions for the New Workforce: Policies for a New Social Contract” (1989, with Karen Nussbaum).In 2010, President Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. “He revitalized the American labor movement,” Mr. Obama said at a White House ceremony, “emphasizing union organizing and social justice, and was a powerful advocate for America’s workers.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More