With another presidential election on the horizon, the leadership of the UWUA has spent the last several months evaluating who is looking out for the interests of working families in America. Based on the performance of the administration over the last few years, Joe Biden has emerged as the most pro-union president we’ve seen in our lifetimes.
To find a historical analog, we would have to go all the way back to President Franklin Roosevelt whose New Deal policies helped to bring the modern labor movement into existence in this country. Until now, no president — not even FDR — had ever walked a picket line supporting unions. In a historic show of support for organized labor, President Biden walked the line with UAW members in support of their strike against automakers.
Under President Biden’s direction, the NLRB has made significant changes in federal labor law making it easier for unions to organize, for workers to engage in more effective strikes, bargain better contracts, stop employers from unilaterally implementing terms on workers, and impose more effective penalties on employers that violate workers’ rights.
As a result of these policies, more workers are organizing unions than they have in decades. NLRB election petitions are way up, and unions are winning elections at an unprecedented pace. In the first six months of 2023, for example, unions won 80% of elections held by the NLRB, including 18 of 19 in bargaining units larger than 500. These victories added nearly 60,000 new members to America’s unions in just six months.
Further, the policies enacted by President Biden across his administration are making sure infrastructure and energy projects are pro-worker and employ as many union members as possible. We know whatever comes next as new sources of energy evolve and our infrastructure is rebuilt and improved, union members will have a say in the policies that will influence their futures.
In the water sector alone, the Biden Administration has announced $5.8 billion in funding for drinking and wastewater infrastructure investment — the largest investment in clean water in American history. This will deliver funding to every state and territory in the country to expand access to clean drinking water, replace lead pipes, improve wastewater and sanitation infrastructure, and remove PFAS contamination in water.
In the energy industry, President Biden has long supported an all-of-the-above energy policy. Under President Biden, the U.S. has become the world’s leading producer of natural gas and the world’s largest exporter of natural gas.
Further, the U.S. is also currently producing more oil than any other country in history and is expected to produce 13.3 million barrels of crude oil per day later this year according to S&P Global. Output is currently so strong that surplus oil is being sent overseas. In fact, this is the first time since the end of the Second World War that the U.S. has been a net oil exporter.
For those of us who spend our lives advocating for the working class, to us there can be no doubt that, over the last century, organized labor and the working men and women of America have never had a stronger ally and friend in government than we have in President Joe Biden. With his leadership, we believe the future for the working class has never looked brighter.