[Peace-discuss] Don't be fooled: Joe Biden is no friend of unions

[David Johnson]

Don't be fooled: Joe Biden is no friend of unions 

 <https://www.theguardian.com/profile/gabriel-winant> Gabriel Winant 

The former vice-president is dressing up his candidacy in a blue-collar
costume. But he's never taken a political risk for workers, and many
policies he has supported has harmed Workers. What's remarkable is that
Biden's proletarian minstrel act has worked for this long.

In San Francisco there's a high-end boutique called "Unionmade". There you
will find expensive work jackets and overalls, lit by bare bulbs and
displayed on unvarnished metal shelves. The aesthetic could not convey its
message any more clearly: buy these clothes, and access a bygone era of
authenticity and American craftsmanship. But it's a lie - the clothes on
offer are largely not union-made. "The unfortunate reality is that there are
not many unions left in the garment industry and so the name was cultivated
as a signifier of well-made and aesthetically timeless goods," explains a
spokesperson.

As the industrial working class has faded, its afterimage has become
available for appropriation in commerce, in culture and in politics. Such
appropriation need not entail commitment to the workers' movement. Everyone
from Levi's jeans to Donald Trump has made this move - and now,
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/joebiden> Joe Biden, the would-be
candidate of labor.

Biden is the Unionmade of politicians. The former vice-president is taking
great care to dress up his new candidacy in a blue-collar costume; as Andrew
Epstein puts it, he is an "aesthetic populist". His
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/29/joe-biden-pennsylvania-firs
t-campaign-event-2020> kickoff rally w
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/29/joe-biden-pennsylvania-firs
t-campaign-event-2020> as on Monday in a union hall in Pittsburgh, where the
president of the United Steelworkers of America promised his members would
be present "wearing their USW gear".

The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), whose president has
long been close to Biden,
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-2020-international-association-of-fi
refighters-endorses-biden-for-president/> has endorsed him. Bob Casey, the
Pennsylvania senator of the old New Deal variety (anti-abortion, pro-labor),
chimes in that Biden has an "electric" connection with "old-school union
guys".

Whoa there Democrats - Joe Biden isn't as electable as you think 

When he was considering running in 2016, CNN observed, "Joe Biden's
relationship with America's working men and women is at the core of his
political soul." Yet the idea that Biden is some kind of working-class hero
has no discernible substance. Like the myth on the right that Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez is an empty-headed idiot, it's pure projection - though one
that he's at great pains to encourage.

To be sure, Biden is a nominally pro-union liberal. Like any Democrat, he
won't cross a picket line. He loves to talk in union halls. He's always
saying things like, "There's an old saying - all men are created equal but
then a few became firefighters," and "The best place for me to be my whole
career is surrounded by organized labor. And I know how to say 'union'."

The notional blue-collar appeal of Joe from hard-luck Scranton was widely
understood to be one of the main reasons that Barack Obama - famously the
effete "wine track" candidate - selected him as a running mate. But where
does this appeal come from? Biden's not a scion of wealth, but he grew up in
the middle class: his father was a used-car salesman, not a factory worker.

At no point in his career has Biden proven willing to take the slightest
political risk on behalf of workers. 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.

In fact, I can find reports of only two instances of Biden appearing on a
picket line or otherwise supporting embattled workers at any point in his
very long public life: once in Iowa, during his 1987 presidential campaign,
and just this month in Boston. Now, his first major presidential fundraiser
is being hosted by the founder of one of the country's leading anti-union
law firms. The man running to be labor's champion is sponsored by someone
who has made millions choking the life out of the labor movement.

Nor does Biden have a public policy record favorable to the working class.
In 1977-1978, during unions' big push for labor law reform, he vacillated
for months and sabotaged the proposal with public criticism. He voted for
Nafta and supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He authored the punishing
2005 bankruptcy bill, a reward to creditors and punishment to debtors. Worse
still, he has been one of the main legislative architects of mass
incarceration, a regime that has devastated the heavily policed and punished
American working class.

But this brings us to the real substance of the problem. Biden would surely
not recognize the targets of mass incarceration as members of what he
imagines as the "working class". As he put it in a speech to the IAFF in
March, "In my neighborhood you grew up either to be a firefighter or a cop,
a tradesman or a priest." This stratum is what has often been called the
"aristocracy of labor". These occupations and their unions have historically
been hostile to women and people of color and de facto segregated. They are
more economically comfortable and politically conservative than the rest of
the working class, and are notorious for pursuing their own immediate
interests over broader working-class solidarity. The building trades, for
instance, have played a central role in leading organized labor's opposition
to the Green New Deal.

When Biden cracked a joke several weeks ago about his habit of touching
women without consent, he was speaking to the International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers. While the IBEW today takes a strong public stand for
workplace equality, both the union and the industry have deep histories of
ignoring sexual harassment and racial discrimination. According to a 2013
study, only one-quarter of women in the building trades believe they are
equally respected on the job. This context makes Biden's joking about the
accusation of a Latina before that particular crowd seem altogether more
insidious. Harassment, after all, is nothing if not a workplace issue. You'd
only joke about it to a union crowd if you didn't think women were really
workers.

But Biden's vision of a better deal for labor is, explicitly, to turn back
the clock. "There used to be a basic bargain in this country," he is fond of
saying. "All we're trying to do is get it back to where we were."

The unions that are considering supporting Biden are the blue-collar ones
that were party to what he calls the "basic bargain" of mid-century. The
leaders of those organizations were unnerved by how strongly Donald Trump
ran among their members, and it is this anxiety that fuels their attraction
to Biden, who they hope will do their persuasion work for them.

Unions closer to politicians than to their members are unions waiting to
die. As labor's fortunes have declined, so has the imaginative scope of many
labor leaders. Each year of shrinking membership has driven them to behave
more narrowly and defensively, to abandon the initiative.

This is all the worse in a moment that invites broad and radical vision.
More workers went on strike in 2018 than in any year since 1986. Over 90% of
those who did worked in either healthcare or education - sectors that were
not included in the mid-century "basic bargain".

What's remarkable is that Biden's proletarian minstrel act has worked for
this long. When he dropped out of the 1988 presidential race, it was after
getting caught plagiarizing a monologue by the British Labour party leader,
Neil Kinnock, on his coalminer roots. Biden's spokesperson explained that,
while Biden had no immediate relations who were coalminers, the "people that
his ancestors grew up with in the Scranton region, and in general the people
of that region were coalminers." In fact, Biden did have an ancestor in the
coal industry, Patrick F Blewitt, who died in 1911. But he wasn't a miner -
he was a boss.

 

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