Harris' Union Campaign - Lawyers, Guns & Money (2024)

Organized labor overwhelmingly supports the Harris/Walz campaign. But that doesn’t necessarily seep into the rank and file. We know that union members vote for Democrats at higher rates than non-union members, but that doesn’t mean that union members vote for Democrats at rates even close to as high as they should. It’s Politico, yes, but this is still a solid report on Harris trying to chip away at union members who have voted for Trump.

But there are holdouts. The Teamsters, which represent 1.3 million members, still haven’t endorsed a candidate for the White House. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention last month and called Trump “one tough S.O.B.” after surviving an assassination attempt. Adding to the tension, he said last week that he had not gotten an invitation to speak at the Democrats’ convention.

“She has a lot of momentum right now and it’s amazing,” said a union official who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about Harris’ campaign. “But I do think they’re losing a lot of the swing-y, building trades, Teamsters types.”

Union leaders also admit that it is a challenge that members don’t always follow their endorsem*nts. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a Harris ally, said “labor and labor leaders are not monoliths, nor do we have magic wands, nor do we have fairy dust. People make their own decisions.”

Harris is taking steps to bolster the all-important union vote, including by attempting to thaw relations with the Teamsters. She has accepted a solicitation to meet with the union, and there are plans to involve Teamsters members somehow in the Democratic convention, even if that doesn’t mean their leadership.

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And while Trump may have the support of some rank-and-file workers, he also gave Harris an unintended gift last week when he spoke about firing striking workers during his interview with Musk. The backlash to his comments within the labor movement wasn’t limited to O’Brien. Hours after the former president praised Musk for his anti-union history and remarked that when workers go on strike “you say, ‘that’s okay, you’re all gone,’” the United Auto Workers filed federal labor complaints alleging that both men were intimidating workers.

Labor leaders are planning to highlight the remarks in literature they send to workers and during conversations that organizers have with voters while knocking on their doors.

“It’s his voice. It’s not somebody else saying that he might do this. These were his words,” said Brent Booker, president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America. “This is a gift.”

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said, “This quote puts the cherry on top of the sundae … and the fact that he said it to the world’s most famous billionaire just makes it all the more clear.”

Weingarten said, “There’s no one thing that’s going to be lightning in a bottle.” But, she said, “the former president showed his true colors” when he joked about firing striking workers.

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump’s running mate,sought to clean up the former president’s commentsat a campaign stop in Michigan on Wednesday, saying that he wasn’t referring to autoworkers in the critical battleground state but instead “employees of Twitter who use their power to censor American citizens.” Twitter workers, however, have not held a strike.

Trump has tried to appeal to workers, union and nonunion, primarily through his record on trade protectionism and hardline immigration views — arguing that undocumented immigrants are undercutting wages and boxing out American workers. However, during the 2016 campaign, he praised right-to-work laws, which make union organizing more difficult.

In the weeks since Harris launched her campaign, there have been few polls that have measured her support among union households versus Trump’s.

Where it ends up could be critical.

Obviously, Harris is not going to take 75% of union voters, but moving that needle by a few percent can mean a very real difference in several states, as Hillary Clinton learned to her peril in 2016.