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Biden Proves to Be Most Pro-Labor President Since FDR, & Economy Benefits [1]
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Date: 2023-09-04
By Karen Rubin, News-Photos-Features.com
Taking stock of labor this Labor Day: workers are sitting pretty, in their most powerful and influential position after decades of diminishing power and rights,. Some 320,000 workers have walked off the job, engaged in 230 strikes, from the Writers to the Teamsters, hospital and hotel workers and flight attendants, while auto workers and school bus drivers rattle sabers, in a demonstration of that power and recognition that it is fleeting.
Workers are empowered by unemployment rates still at historic lows –below 4% for 19 months in a row, the longest strength in 50 years. Jobs creation is still healthy despite Fed Reserve actions raising interest rates to bring down inflation (now 3.2%, still lowest of G7 nations). The US added 13 million jobs, including 800,000 manufacturing jobs - more jobs in Biden’s first two years than any President’s single 4-year term – while the labor participation rate hit 62.8 percent in August of 2023, the highest since February 2020, when the pandemic started.
The fact is that President Joe Biden has turned his campaign promise to be the most pro-worker and pro-union President in American history into action. Support for unions is at its highest level in more than half a century (273,000 last year alone joined or are trying to form a union last year and the public has supported actions), inflation-adjusted income is up 3.5% since the President took office, with the largest wage gains over the last two years going to the lowest-paid workers.
Scoff if you like, but this would not have happened on its own. In fact, the strong labor position goes against the unrelenting auguries of recession and counters the massive layoffs that should result from the Federal Reserve’s steady increases in interest rates which are intended to weaken the labor market (that is, increase unemployment) in order to lower inflation (on the backs of families that work for a living). And still, the USA’s inflation rate, now at 3.2%, has been the lowest of any G7 nation, while America has had the strongest economy, bolstered by strong consumer spending.
In fact, it is proof, positive of Biden’s economic approach – Bidenomics – that boils down to “growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up”, reversing the insidious “trickle down” policy focused on tax cuts and incentives that actually encouraged employers to shut down American factories and offshore jobs, drive down wages and increase unemployment, and only served to benefit the richest while exacerbating the gap between rich and poor (CEO pay is now 398.8 times the annual average salary of workers, compared to 20-to-1 in 1965 and 59-to-1 in 1989).
Bidenomics aims at promoting public and private investment in manufacturing, rebuilding infrastructure for the 21st century, transitioning to clean energy, promoting research and development. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act is singly the greatest factor supporting high employment, despite the Fed’s interest rate hikes; already, 37,000 new projects in 4,500 communities across the nation are underway. The Inflation Reduction Act, with its historic investments in climate action, is projected to create 1.5 million jobs over the next decade.
The CHIPS and Science Act, aimed at ensuring the United States continues to lead the world in innovation and prevent the USA from being hostage to global semiconductor chip and supply chain shortages, already has attracted $166 billion in investment and ignited a semiconductor manufacturing boom.
At the same time, under his Buy in America and Invest in America rules, along with securing a global minimum tax rate, more jobs are being created here rather than employers chasing the cheapest labor and taxes abroad.
The result – that confounds economists – is managing that illusive goal of steady, stable, sustainable economic growth, busting the “normal” boom-bust, expansion-recession business cycle.
But that’s not all Biden has done to improve conditions for workers and give working families “breathing room” in their financial security.
Biden has revitalized the National Labor Relations Board, that oversees workers’ protection and rights. He’s raised prevailing wage standards for construction workers for the first time in 40 years, which will increase pay for one million workers; recovered more than $690 million for more than 440,000 low-paid workers across the nation; working to ban non-compete agreements that trap 30 million Americans from getting better jobs in their field; and invested in apprenticeships and job re-training.
Biden has issued pro-worker Executive Orders that extend overtime protections to an additional 3.6 million workers; restore and expand collective bargaining rights for the federal workforce; require federal contractors to pay a $15 minimum wage. He’s implemented the Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act, to prevent the insolvency of struggling pension plans and protect working families’ financial security.
Biden has mobilized his administration on behalf of workers, creating the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, chaired by Vice President Harris; the Treasury Department released a first-of-its-kind report showing that unions help grow the economy by reducing inequality, raising incomes, increasing savings (including retirement savings), and broadening homeownership.
President Biden is also calling on Congress to pass the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which will make it easier for private-sector, State, and local government workers to join a union and bargain collectively.
This is all before you consider the many ways the Biden Administration is lowering costs for working families, from lowering prescription drug costs (finally!), ending junk fees on airline, hotel and concert tickets; getting medical care to veterans and survivors (PACT) and increasing access and affordability to child care and long-term care. Biden is promoting greater competition across the economy to counter the power oligarchies and monopolies have to raise prices. And, oh yes, he cancelled more than $116 billion in student loan debt for 3.4 million Americans, despite Republican court challenges.
The contrast to Republicans, who are still itching to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), Inflation Reduction Act, minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, and actually prevent cities from requiring water breaks for workers during record heat wave, is stunning. And yet, as Senator Bernie Sanders noted, most “working class” back the MAGA Republicans whose policies uniformly favor the wealthy and well-connected against their interests. (The pandering hypocrisy on view as GOP presidential wannabes march in New Hampshire’s Labor Day parade.)
“One of the features of [the tight labor market and workers having more power] is that unions also have more power to make demands at the bargaining table,” Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su on Yahoo Finance.” And we’ve seen the positive effects of that over President Biden’s tenure. We’ve seen increases in wages in bargaining agreements. …. We’re also seeing the highest level of support for unions in public opinion polls since 1965. That is not accidental. This is very much a part of when you have a President who is saying that we want an economy where workers get their fair share. We want the jobs we create as much as possible to be good union jobs because of those benefits. Because of job security, because of wage growth, because of other kinds of benefits in union jobs that also have an upward effect on working conditions elsewhere.”
President Biden, in his Labor Day Proclamation, declared, “I promised to be the most pro-union President in history, and I firmly believe that every worker in America should have the free and fair choice to join a union or organize and bargain collectively with their employer without coercion or intimidation. That is because when organized labor wins, our Nation wins. My Administration will continue to support and encourage labor unions so that workers have a seat at the decision-making table, an opportunity to speak truth to power, and the support to fight for the dignity and respect they deserve.
“On Labor Day, we stand in solidarity with all the workers who lift our Nation to new heights and all the labor unions who give all workers power and voice. May we continue working to restore the American Dream for every person willing to work hard in our Nation by embracing what has always been the foundation of our country's success: investing in America and American workers.”
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