AFL-CIO leadership endorses… strikebreaker Joe Biden?!

By Workers Strike Back. Published June 22, 2023

The AFL-CIO just made an important announcement about the US Presidential election, which has deeply angered and surprised many of its 12.4 million members. The union federation announced that it was making its earliest Presidential endorsement in history, without any democratic discussion or process in its ranks, for strikebreaker Joe Biden.

For millions of Americans who are struggling to make ends meet, this “historic” endorsement is a rotten sellout, in the wake of Biden’s many vicious attacks on the working class, including the blocking of the railroad workers’ strike.

Two years ago, some of these same union leaders were talking tough towards Joe Biden and the Democrats. With the memory of the Bernie Sanders campaign, the George Floyd protests, and “Striketober” still fresh in their minds, business unionist leaders tried to present themselves as fighters against the Democratic establishment in their public statements.

For example, they were publicly calling out Biden over the PRO Act, a pro-union bill being “considered” by Democrats in Congress, which would have repealed huge sections of the anti-union Taft-Hartley law. This would have made it easier to form unions and go on strike.

“Pass the PRO act – or else!” they said.

Two years later, workers have no PRO act, no $15/hour minimum wage, and no public option for healthcare, much less Medicare for All. In the meantime, Joe Biden and the Democrats broke a railroad strike, cut food stamps, undermined the right to strike, and dramatically increased deportations of immigrant workers under Trump’s Title 42 law.

There is no universe in which Joe Biden has earned labor’s support, much less at lighting speed. 

This early, completely undemocratic endorsement appears to be motivated in part by the fear that Biden is now facing a pro-worker challenge from the left. Just weeks ago, Cornel West announced his own Presidential campaign, running on a clearly pro-labor platform, unlike Joe Biden.

The leadership of the IBEW, the electricians’ union, bragged about their endorsement of Joe Biden on the front page of their recent union newsletter: “Promises MADE. Promises KEPT.”

But the only promise that Joe Biden has kept is the one he made to wealthy donors at a private fundraiser in New York in 2019. He told them that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he became President. Biden kept that promise. Workers are still falling behind, wages are stagnating or dropping, unions have continued their slow decline, the climate is spiraling out of control, and the rich are still on top of the world.

A union nurse in California was furious to hear about his union's endorsement of Biden, and donated $100 to Workers Strike Back with this comment: "My union just endorsed Biden for "having our back"??? I just worked 9 days in a row and want to share."

Nurses, along with millions of other American workers, are short-staffed, working brutal hours, and being exploited more than ever amid record profits by corporations. Biden has done nothing to address this, and in fact has made it worse.

We need a reckoning in the labor movement, led by the rank-and-file, against union leaders who want to keep rolling over for Democrats. And we need a new mass political party—one that fights unambiguously for the working class, not the billionaires. Can you match our nurse supporter’s donation of $100 or start a monthly donation of $50, $20, or $10 to Workers Strike Back to build the kind of movement we need?

Workers Strike Back is organizing to rebuild a fighting labor movement. We think that unions should fight for clear, bold demands, like the Amazon workers in Kentucky who are organizing for a $30/hour starting wage and 180 hours Paid Time Off.

We think that union leaders should take only the average wage of the workers they represent, like ATU 1001 President and Workers Strike Back activist Ryan Timlin, or socialist City Councilmember Kshama Sawant (not six-figure salaries like AFL-CIO President Liz Schuler).

And we say that unions should not give one more penny to the anti-worker Democratic Party.