Can Joe Biden save California unions? Here’s what they want to see if he’s elected
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is courting union members with what California Labor Federation spokesman Steve Smith described as “the strongest platform to support workers since FDR.”
Biden wants to end “right to work,” allowing unions to collect fees from everyone they represent even if a worker does not choose to join. He wants to hold company executives liable if they interfere with workers’ efforts to unionize, and he wants to allow workers to form a union without holding an election if they gather signatures from a majority of them.
“You’re going to have the best friend labor has ever had in the White House,” Biden told union members at a Labor Day event in Pennsylvania, according to news reports.
California labor leaders think Biden, with his working-class upbringing and experience in the U.S. Senate, could reverse the long-running trend of declining union membership in the state and the nation, especially in the private sector. Still, from the conservative U.S. Supreme Court to Republican legislators who may still control the Senate in 2021, the Biden administration would face a litany of challenges to implement any of the policies outlined in its platform.
“In order for the president to be really successful, he has to work with both sides of the aisle,” said Bob Schoonover, president of SEIU California. “Hopefully, Biden’s history will dictate that he’s the guy to work through those things.”
According to the Union Membership and Coverage Database, 15.1% of the state’s workforce belonged to a union as of 2019, a drop from 17.2% a decade ago. For the private sector, only 8.8% of its workforce is a member of a union, a drop from 9.5% a decade ago and 10.2% in 1999.
The loss of manufacturing jobs as companies shift work overseas is a big factor for the decline in union membership, labor leaders said. But they also attribute the decline to legal and regulatory developments that have tipped the scale against those who seek to form a union, such as what they regard as the government’s failure to impose stiffer penalties against companies that violate labor regulations and the rise of state-by-state “right to work” laws that disadvantage unions.
Biden’s platforms, if implemented, would help balance the scale, labor leaders said.
Empowering union organizers
Smith pointed to Biden’s commitment to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would prohibit employers’ mandatory meetings with employees and shorten timelines for union elections.
“We see votes in union campaigns delayed as a premeditated tactic by the employer, so they can run an aggressive anti-union campaign in the workplace,” Smith said.
Smith said it can take years for the National Labor Relations Board to investigate claims of retaliation against those who seek to organize. Even if the retaliation claims are found to be true, the companies get so little penalty that they “chalk it up to the cost of doing business,” he said.
Smith said Biden’s platforms would change that by holding companies and their executives liable, even criminally, if they interfere with organizing efforts.
Biden has also sided with California unions in one of their biggest recent campaigns, endorsing the labor law known as Assembly Bill 5 that compels companies to provide employment benefits to more workers rather than classifying them as independent contractors.
For the public sector, much of Biden’s platforms may not have as big of an impact in California as in other states, since California has among the highest percentage of unionized public employees, at 53% as of 2019.
But one way Biden could make an impact on the state’s public sector union membership is by appointing a justice to the U.S. Supreme Court who would undo a 2018 decision known as Janus vs. AFSCME. That 5-4 ruling prohibited public sector unions from collecting fees from those who did not want to join them, ending a 41-year precedent that had allowed the practice.
Biden’s running mate Kamala Harris has condemned the Janus decision, saying it “undermines the basic American premise.”
“It would take a single vote to unwind the Janus decision,” said Will Swaim, head of the California Policy Center, which has sought to persuade public sector workers in the state to leave their unions.
More urgency for unions
Passing any of Biden’s labor platforms would require the administration to navigate through a series of headwinds.
Any legislation such as the proposal to protect union organizing would have to go through Congress. Democrats are likely to control the House, but it is unlikely that they will have 60 senators to break through any Republican filibuster.
Under the Obama administration, Biden made a major push for a law that would have forced companies to recognize unions when they gathered signatures from a majority of employees. But Biden’s efforts stalled because the bill didn’t have 60 votes to overcome the filibuster.
“It’s a big question: Would the Democrats capture the Senate, and what’s the future of the filibuster?” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
And having the Supreme Court reverse decisions such as Janus and get favorable rulings for unions may prove to be challenging, given the court’s current ideological makeup with conservative justices holding a 5-4 advantage.
Still, Jacobs said Biden could make an impact on labor in ways other than passing legislation. Changing the makeup of the National Labor Relations Board and banning federal money from going to employers who illegally oppose unions — as Biden has proposed — could also make a big difference, he said. “Having the federal government willing to enforce the law is important and that’s what Biden can do without Congress.”
And appointing judges more friendly to labor could make a big difference in many of the ongoing court cases, especially in the areas of public sector union issues. Bob Wickers, California Director at the Washington-based Freedom Foundation, noted his group has filed a lawsuit to stop Medicaid payments to in-home caregivers from being directed to unions. Nearly $100 million in union fees is at stake in California, Wickers said.
“In California, it’s just going to embolden the government unions’ system,” said Swaim of the California Policy Center of the potential impacts the Biden presidency can have.
Jacobs of the UC Labor Center said labor issues were not high on the Obama administration’s priorities, compared to health care reforms and other items.
“I think things have changed tremendously in recent years in terms of the recognition of urgency in addressing this issue,” Jacobs said. “What matters in the end is how much attention is put to the platform, how high of a priority it is, and how much political capital the president is using on it.”
This story was originally published September 17, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Can Joe Biden save California unions? Here’s what they want to see if he’s elected."
