Joe Biden’s efforts to win union support in the Democratic primary are being hurt by the fact that many in the labor movement are bitter that the Obama administration failed to pass their top priority at the time, “card check” legislation.
As vice president, Biden was the administration’s point man for card check, which would have made union organizing radically easier by effectively getting rid of workplace elections. After an initial push from the administration, the effort fizzled out, and the Senate never voted on the legislation. A lot of union activists haven’t forgotten.
When the 725,000-member International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers tweeted in favor of Biden on Sunday, critics repeatedly cited card check as a reason why Biden wasn’t worthy of support. “Biden talks the talk but what has he done? Did he vote for card check or any pro-union laws? Bernie did,” tweeted disgruntled activist Edward Szewczyk. When the union endorsed Biden last month, it quickly became apparent there was significant dissent inside the ranks. 1,200 IBEW members signed a letter demanding that the union back Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a card check fan, instead.
Card check isn’t crippling Biden’s ability to win over unions, where he is competitive with Sanders. Most rank-and-file union members focus on other things, said Ramsin Canon, a Chicago-based labor rights attorney. But card check is a black mark for Biden among the union activists who are more likely to organize and vote in primaries. “The labor Left is pretty focused on that,” Canon said.
Five national unions besides IBEW have endorsed Biden. The largest is the 1.6-million-member American Federation of Teachers, which also co-endorsed Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Sanders has the endorsement of four other major national unions, the largest being the 200,000 member American Postal Workers Union. Some unions are concerned about the effects of Sanders’s “Medicare for all” proposal, which would undermine the private health coverage they have negotiated for their members.
Card check legislation alters workplace unionization rules to make it easier for unions to get recognition. Ordinarily, unions present employers with cards signed by workers when they have majority support. Employers then have the option of accepting the union’s claim or requesting that the federal government oversee a secret ballot vote to verify that the workers do want a union. If the union wins the election, it gets recognition.
Under card check rules, recognition would become automatic when the union presents the cards. Fans contend it would stymie union busting by businesses. Critics allege that card check would leave no way to tell whether the cards’ signatures were forged or whether the workers understood what they were signing.
Unions have wanted card check in order to stem years of declining membership. Only 10.3% of the workforce is currently unionized, the lowest level since the Labor Department started tracking the figure. Unions became hopeful they could get card check in 2008 after the Obama administration endorsed it, but the legislation, dubbed the Employee Free Choice Act, never got through Congress. Biden takes much of the heat for that because he was hyped at the time as the deal-maker who could leverage his decades as a Delaware senator to get the bill passed.
The then-vice president told a cheering union crowd at a 2009 Labor Day rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that card check would pass by the end of the year. That same month, the Democratic Party’s Senate majority rose to 60 votes, meaning it was theoretically possible to pass it over Republican opposition.
“Besides his history with unions, Biden’s ability to work with Republicans and skill at leveraging his Senate relationships to get things passed had been a key selling point for Obama,” writes Branko Marcetic for the socialist magazine Jacobin. A February article on the liberal news website Common Dreams called Biden “culpable” for the failure.
“Obama/Biden didn’t push for card check in the first two years,” tweeted Dan Costa, a labor and immigration expert for the Economic Policy Institute. “To add insult to injury, they were ignoring and chastising the ‘sanctimonious’ and ‘professional’ left as early as 2010.”
But despite the optimism liberals had at the time, it is not clear that Democrats had the supermajority needed to pass card check. The legislation faced stiff opposition from the business community, led by the Chamber of Commerce. Republicans were united in opposition, and some centrist Democrats were swayed by home-state businesses. A vote was put off while the administration engaged in additional lobbying, and ultimately, the Senate never took it up.
Biden still supports card check, and his campaign website notes he was an original co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act in 2007. Another co-sponsor was Vermont independent Sanders.
Andrew Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union, said Biden has built up a lot of goodwill with unions in other areas and that his continued support for card check helps. “I think Biden will generate lots of passion from union members — and confidence that he will be serious about labor law reform,” Stern said.
