Despite his questionable record on unions, Joe Biden backs Democrats’ plan to strip workers of right to secret ballot elections, forcing them into union contracts, and eliminating right to work laws.
Last week, with his support waning, the Democrats’ current front-runner in the presidential primary, Joe Biden, released his plan to rebuild unions.
Like his other Democrat Party competitors, Biden’s campaign website states that he supports the so-called “PRO Act” which (among other things) eliminates secret-ballot elections for workers, eliminates state Right-to-Work laws, and forces companies and employees into union contracts.
However, Biden will go beyond the PRO Act, his website says, by “enacting legislation to impose even stiffer penalties on corporations and to hold company executives personally liable when they interfere with organizing efforts, including criminally liable when their interference is intentional.”
In addition to support for the PRO Act, Biden also plans to re-institute the “blacklist” rule that was promulgated during the Obama Administration.
“Biden will institute a multi-year federal debarment for all employers who illegally oppose unions, building on debarment efforts pursued in the Obama-Biden Administration,” his website announced.
Despite his pro-union plans, he is not without his critics.
“At no point in his career has Biden proven willing to take the slightest political risk on behalf of workers,” Gabriel Winant wrote in The Guardian earlier this year.
His appearances in union halls occur when he needs something from labor. On the other hand, when Biden went to vacation in the Hamptons during the 2011 Verizon strike, workers in the area sought him out “just to possibly get a show of support, a thumb’s-up, a head nod, anything” – to no avail. That same year in Wisconsin, labor leaders specifically asked Biden to come to rally their resistance to the brutal, ultimately successful attack by Scott Walker; Biden declined.
Despite his presumed front-runner status, Biden’s support is waning.
Dogged by questions about his mental capacity, his son’s business dealings in China, Ukraine and Romania, recent polls have seen support for Joe Biden slipping, while Democrat Elizabeth Warren has been rising.
