Biden White House Earned Big Labor’s Accolades

Legislation, Appointments and Edicts All Promoted Forced Dues

Six years ago this coming spring, lifelong politician Joe Biden launched his third campaign for U.S. chief executive in Pittsburgh with a promise to Big Labor bosses and their militant followers that he would be “the most pro-union President you’ve ever seen.”

Union officialdom clearly believed Mr. Biden

That’s why the hierarchies of the AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers (UAW), the National Education Association (NEA), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and other unions poured, by their own admission, roughly $1.8 billion into electioneering and lobbying during the 2020 presidential campaign cycle. 

With Big Labor’s help, Joe Biden won the presidency. And he began paying back his favorite political patrons at 12:23 PM on January 20, 2021, just minutes after he had taken the oath of office and pledged during his inaugural address to show “tolerance and humility.”

Message to Union Brass: I’ll Do Whatever You Say 

Following to the letter pre-inauguration orders issued by top union bosses, the Biden White House sent an email at that time to Peter Robb, the Donald Trump-appointed and U.S. Senate-confirmed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) general counsel. 

The email demanded that Mr. Robb resign by 5 PM that afternoon. If he didn’t, he would be fired. And when Mr. Robb refused to acquiesce to this extraordinary demand, the new Big Labor President didn’t hesitate on January 21 to pull the trigger and terminate him.

“Joe Biden wanted to send a signal, right off the bat, that he was willing to do practically anything union bigwigs said,” recalled National Right to Work Committee Vice President Greg Mourad. 

“Big Labor hated Mr. Robb because, under his tenure, workers who credibly charged that union bosses had trampled their legal rights, such as the right to vote out an unwanted union and the right not to bankroll union politics with their dues money, got fair hearings and often prevailed. 

“Union officials prefer such rights exist in theory only, if at all.”

The abrupt firing of Peter Robb and Joe Biden’s subsequent successful nomination of forced-dues zealot Jennifer Abruzzo, formerly a union lawyer, to replace him as general counsel epitomize the Biden White House’s entire record on labor-management relations. Through legislation, appointments and edicts, Mr. Biden promoted, again and again, the termination of employees for refusal to join or bankroll an unwanted union. 

Legislation Signed by Joe Biden Boosted Organized Labor at Taxpayers’ Expense

On March 11, 2021, just seven weeks into his presidency, Mr. Biden signed into law the union-label, $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” (ARP). 

The ARP sent well over $500 billion in federal taxpayer-funded bailout money to states, localities, government school districts and universities. This pile of money enabled Big Labor-dominated states like New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California to paper over huge shortfalls in their grossly mismanaged government union pension funds.

The ARP simultaneously authorized a $91 billion giveaway to Big Labor-dominated private-sector retirement funds, commonly referred to as “multi-employer pension plans.” And the union bosses and firms who colluded with them for years to underfund notoriously mismanaged plans like the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund won’t ever be required to pay back a dime. 

In the summer of the following year, Mr. Biden rubber-stamped the trillion-dollar-plus, cynically mislabeled “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA). A key aim of this scheme is to bribe and browbeat companies and contractors into acquiescing to Big Labor monopoly control over their workforces.

Since the IRA took effect, the manufacturing employment recovery that began with the easing of COVID-19 business lockdowns in May 2020 has ground to a halt. 

Neither the ARP nor the IRA was popular. Both barely made it through the Senate, by razor-thin 51-50 majorities, with Mr. Biden’s equally pro-forced unionism vice president, Kamala Harris, breaking the tie. 

But even with Ms. Harris’s eager assistance, the Biden White House was not able to bring about congressional passage of its #1 legislative objective, the so-called “PRO Act.” 

This scheme would have destroyed the 26 state Right to Work laws nationwide and also implemented a host of other union boss-backed legal and regulatory chances, sharply curtailing employees’ ability to say “No” to Big Labor. 

Grassroots Opposition Stopped Biden Team From Destroying All State Right to Work Laws

The PRO Act, facing intense opposition from Right to Work members and other freedom-loving Americans, remained stalled in Congress as this Newsletter edition went to press, less than one month before the end of the Biden presidency. 

Unfortunately, concerned citizens’ success in preventing the PRO Act from becoming law did not prevent President Biden’s bureaucratic appointees from at least partially implementing some of that bill’s most anti-worker provisions through regulatory means.

One egregious case in point are the PRO Act provisions that would redefine “independent contractor” so as to shove as many as possible of the up to 70 million self-employed people across the country into payroll jobs so they can be forced into paying dues on pain of termination. 

In 2023 and 2024, respectively, the Biden NLRB and the Biden Labor Department issued new federal rules potentially reclassifying tens of millions of independent contractors, even though the underlying statutes those rules are supposed to enforce hadn’t changed at all. 

Moreover, the Biden NLRB’s outrageous August 2023 decision in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific effectively says that unions don’t need to win elections in order to seize control over workers and begin forcing them to pay dues, or be fired, if they are employed in a non-Right Work state.

To circumvent an election, all Big Labor has to do under Cemex is file “unfair labor practice” charges and collect union “authorization” cards from 50% plus one of employees. Such cards, which are routinely extracted from workers while union organizers are watching them, are an unreliable gauge of employee sentiment. 

By promoting “cards only” unionization over secret-ballot elections, Cemex bureaucratically implements other key provisions in the stalled PRO Act.

‘Every Single Project’ Is ‘Going to Be Union’ 

“Among all the radical steps Joe Biden and his appointees have taken to promote compulsory unionism,” said Mr. Mourad, “perhaps the most radical of all was an edict, known as Executive Order 14063, issued by the President in February 2022. 

“This power grab effectively mandates that tens of billions of dollars spent by the federal government on construction projects be offered to union-only workers and firms.

“Under E.O.14063, proudly observed Mr. Biden at the time he signed it, ‘Every single project that we’re talking about [that] is paid for with federal dollars . . . is going to be union jobs.’

“The fact is, Joe Biden routinely bragged about being a union stooge. In May 2021, to cite just one other example, he told construction union bosses in Michigan: ‘I’m a union President. Make no bones about it.’ 

“Even today, Mr. Biden probably thinks his craven pandering to Big Labor was politically smart, but the reality is very different. 

“Scientific nationwide polls taken shortly before Mr. Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race last July showed his support among working-class Americans overall was abysmally low and his support among union household members only was tepid at best. 

“And after taking over as the head of the ticket, Ms. Harris went on to underperform with these same groups of voters on Election Day.”

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This article was originally published in our monthly newsletter. Go here to access previous newsletter posts.

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