{"id":2022,"date":"2020-09-30T08:21:29","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T07:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=2022"},"modified":"2020-09-30T08:21:29","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T07:21:29","slug":"u-s-unions-warn-trump-dont-even-think-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/u-s-unions-warn-trump-dont-even-think-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. unions warn Trump: Don\u2019t even think about it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A few days ago, the president of the AFL-CIO (the US\u2019s national trade union centre) issued a powerful statement.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The federation \u201ccategorically rejects all threats to the peaceful transition of power\u201d said Richard Trumka, a former leader of the mine workers union. \u201cThe labor movement,\u201d he said, \u201csimply will not allow any breach of the U.S. Constitution or other effort to deny the will of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trumka\u2019s comments came in response to increasingly threatening noises being made by Donald Trump in which he threatened that regardless of the results of the election on 3 November, he would not be ceding power to his opponent Joe Biden, ever.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like most observers, Trumka is convinced the Biden is likely to win the election, and concluded with these extraordinary words:
\u201cAmerica\u2019s workers will continue to be steadfast in defense of our democracy in the face of President Trump\u2019s antics, and we stand ready to do our part to ensure his defeat in this election is followed by his removal from office.\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What he meant by union members doing their part to ensure his \u201cremoval from office\u201d was not made clear.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There has never been an American election in which a defeated candidate \u2013 an incumbent, no less \u2013 refused to accept the results. This is truly uncharted territory \u2013 and unions are having say things and do things that they\u2019ve never had to do before.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trumka\u2019s remarks came as unions have increased their commitment to a Democratic victory, both in the presidential race and in the races for seats in Congress.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to a report earlier this month in The Hill, unions believe that they are \u201cbacking a better candidate in a better climate against a better target\u201d than was the case in 2016, when most of them supported Hillary Clinton.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Union leaders are counting on Biden winning more support from their members than Clinton did. In 2016, Clinton beat Trump in union households by just 51% to 42%. She did far worse than Obama did among union members \u2013 and in Ohio, she didn\u2019t even win a majority of union votes. Trump\u2019s support among union members was unusually high.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time around, union leaders believe that Trump\u2019s appeal to working class voters in general, and to union members in particular, has gone down, due to both the economic crisis and the pandemic.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some union leaders are convinced that Biden will do better than Clinton among their members because, as The Hill put it, he \u201cis seen as more of a working class kind of guy.\u201d Biden is also helped by the fact that a majority of union members in the U.S. are women or people of colour, two groups that are expected to vote overwhelmingly against Trump.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden\u2019s campaign to win union support is not, however, helped by his long-standing support (shared with Hillary Clinton) for trade deals such as NAFTA that were seen as detrimental to workers.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the moment, Trump\u2019s support in the labor movement seems limited to unions of law enforcement officials \u2013 police and border patrol, with the occasional local union endorsement.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Union support for minor party candidates, and in particular the Green Party, is non-existent. The website for Green candidate Howie Hawkins, who is a lifelong trade unionist and socialist, shows just seven endorsements \u2013 including the \u201cLegal Marijuana Now Party of Minnesota\u201d \u2013 but none from a union.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s threats to remain in power regardless of the election result have served to sharpen the focus for American trade unionists. Their goals, as stated by Richard Trumka, could not be clearer: first defeat Trump \u2013 and then ensure that he actually leaves office.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, the president of the AFL-CIO (the US\u2019s national trade union centre) issued a powerful statement. The federation \u201ccategorically rejects all threats to the peaceful transition of power\u201d said Richard Trumka, a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2023,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solidarity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2024,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions\/2024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}