Union leaders at DNC push back against Trump overtures to organized labor

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is highlighting its pro-union stance at the Democratic National Convention this week, pushing back against Republican Party overtures to organized labor at their own convention last month.

It’s an attempt to refute former President Donald Trump’s claims that he will work with organized labor amid recent meetings with the president of the Teamsters union, and an effort by Harris to hitch onto President Joe Biden’s labor record, which includes being the first president to walk a picket line.

Addressing the Wisconsin delegation to the DNC Wednesday morning, U.S. Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su argued Harris had fought wage theft as attorney general of California, and would enact worker-friendly policies as president.

“The other ticket is trying to say that they are the ticket and the party of working people. Yeah, give us a break, right?” she said. “You definitely cannot be anti-union and pro-worker.”

Su’s remarks built upon a message highlighted to the full convention during the first two days of programming, which prominently featured union leaders on the DNC’s main stage.

On Tuesday, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers union, which has endorsed Harris, gave a fiery repudiation of Trump’s record on labor, calling the former president a “scab” and Harris “one of us.”

Several retired Teamsters also took the stage Tuesday, a clear jab at the presence of that union’s president, Sean O’Brien, at the Republican National Convention last month.

Among that group was Kenneth Stribling of Wisconsin, who serves as president of the National United Committee to Protect Pensions.

Stribling praised one of Biden’s signature legislative achievements, the American Rescue Plan Act, which included a bailout of union pension plans, which had been cut under a 2014 law. Harris, in her capacity as vice president, cast the tie-breaking vote to pass that legislation.

Stribling said that not losing pension benefits was critical while his wife, Beverly, was dying of cancer.

“Beverly made me promise never to quit until we made this right,” he said. “(Biden and Harris) saved over 1 million pensions, including 33,000 from my state of Wisconsin.”

“As President, I know Kamala Harris will have our backs,” he added.

Wisconsin has watched its status as a union stronghold diminish in recent years, particularly after the 2011 passage of Act 10, an initiative of then-Gov. Scott Walker that weakened public employee unions. Republican state lawmakers have also passed so-called right-to-work legislation, which opponents say restrict unions’ ability to remain financially viable.

But the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month was also the site of an historic moment when Teamsters President Sean O’Brien became the first leader in his union’s history to address that event.

O’Brien did not endorse Trump, but he suggested Republicans should make inroads with organized labor, which remain a key voting bloc in many states, including Wisconsin. His speech reportedly internally roiled the 1.2 million-member trade union.

While most major unions backed the Biden ticket early in the election cycle, and many have transferred their endorsements to Harris, the support of rank-and-file members is less categorically in the Democratic camp. The DNC attempted to undercut those advances this week in part by bringing a range of union leaders to the stage.

O’Brien, who previously said he requested time to speak at this week’s DNC, reportedly was rebuffed and has not appeared at the convention in Chicago.

Shawn Reents, a Democratic delegate from Janesville, is an international labor representative for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. In an interview with WPR Wednesday, he praised the Biden-Harris administration’s work on infrastructure and creation of union jobs.

Trump’s administration, by contrast, “tried to destroy the labor movement when they had four years in office, and they’ll try and do it again,” he argued.