Total union membership has been on a decadeslong decline as workers move further away from organized labor, but President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan is meant to arrest or reverse the trend.
While the scope and scale of a possible bipartisan infrastructure plan are still in flux, Biden’s proposed $2.3 trillion infrastructure spending package prioritizes unions and puts organized labor right upfront every step of the way — even if it means spending more money on fewer projects.
In a fact sheet about the infrastructure spending proposal, the American Jobs Plan, unions are mentioned some two dozen times. Union membership hovered at just over 10% last year, a precipitous drop from nearly one-third of workers 50 years ago. Biden has made it clear on the campaign trail and since coming into office that federal policy will be more amenable to organized labor under his administration.
“The policy of our government is to encourage union organizing, and employers should ensure their workers have a free and fair choice to join a union,” he said in February.
The White House fact sheet said the administration “is calling on Congress to create new, good-quality union jobs for American workers by leveraging their grit and ingenuity to address the climate crisis and build a sustainable infrastructure.”
At the heart of the proposal is a call for Congress to enact the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, known as the PRO Act. The PRO Act would essentially nullify 27 “right-to-work” states, which prevent employees from being required to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment.
Additionally, the proposal would require employers and unions to begin bargaining within 10 days of a written request, allow the National Labor Relations Board to impose new civil penalties for labor violations, and help gig workers unionize. But even without the PRO Act, Biden’s package puts a lot of emphasis on organized labor.
The spending proposal, which focuses on many industries typically associated with union jobs, such as transportation and construction, also includes a demand that employers who benefit from the federal infrastructure investments “follow strong labor standards and remain neutral when their employees seek to organize a union and bargain collectively.”
The American Jobs Plan also envisions work associated with the investments being subject to prevailing wage laws, which Rachel Greszler, an economics research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner effectively means the jobs would have to be union jobs or paid at the union wage rate.
Biden’s plan doesn’t just stop at hard infrastructure such as roads and bridges. It also proposes billions of dollars of investments in things including child care facility infrastructure, which may also be subject to prevailing wage laws. Tethering the spending to prevailing wages would drive the cost up, but unions would be pleased with the move.
Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa and his union, which is one of the largest in the world and represents more than 1.3 million members, praised the Biden plan and hailed its pro-union proposals.
“At its core, the American Jobs Plan is not only [a] commitment to investing in our infrastructure, but also investing in the American people,” Hoffa said in a statement. “Not since Roosevelt’s New Deal has a president undertaken such a comprehensive plan to help set America back on course.”
While Biden’s infrastructure package is being eyed enthusiastically by unions and pro-union forces, business groups are not big fans of some of the proposals to bolster organized labor. The Chamber of Commerce, which does support a bipartisan package, has attacked the notion of the PRO Act.
“A bill cannot be ‘pro-worker’ if it harms employees, threatens job creation, and undermines our economic recovery,” Suzanne Clark, president and CEO of the Chamber, said in a statement. She called the provisions a “wish list of union-sponsored priorities” and vowed that the Chamber will fight to prevent them from being enacted.
Biden’s plan will also not be as fulsome as it could be because it sacrifices costs for union support, according to Greszler. Because of proposals like prevailing wages and making it easier for employees to unionize, the money earmarked for infrastructure won’t stretch as far as it would without those provisions, so the number of projects that can be undertaken is limited by cost.
Biden’s infrastructure package might not make it to his desk for signing as he proposed, but the signal to unions that the administration has their back is still quite clear.
