While Joe Biden has a much longer track record of supporting labor unions than Trump — a low bar to clear — his support has often been superficial at best. Biden never met a trade deal that he didn’t love, even when they would gut working class communities by offshoring jobs to countries where employers are allowed to inflict harm on their employees however they wish.
Unionists could be forgiven for falling back into old habits, settling for functioning federal agencies and the hope of judicial appointments as the limit of our ambitions.
The problem is that politics as usual set the stage for the harms done by Donald Trump’s administration. A restoration to the way things were before Trump will do nothing to prevent another autocrat willing to cater to the whims of an ever-hateful right, exterminating whatever tattered shreds of democracy we have left. The other path, the one we must choose if the union movement is to survive, is to fight. Our true enemies may be the bosses seeking to crush our movement, but our opponents must also be those — including Democrats — who want us to trim our ambitions to fit their political needs.”
EDITORIAL: Biden is President. The labor movement must demand more than a return to “normal.
