Monday marked the final day of Mary Kay Henry’s 14-year run as the head of the Service Employees International Union. Her tenure has been filled with triumphs. Over that time, the Fight for 15 movement, which was largely incubated and funded by SEIU, went from quixotic pipe dream to reality in many states. Unions surged in popularity to highs not seen in almost 60 years. And many experts consider Joe Biden’s presidency the most union-friendly administration in almost 100 years.
Yet despite Biden’s record, many polls show waning support among union members for the president’s re-election bid. I reached out to Henry, whose union endorsed Biden for re-election this year, to ask what could be explaining this kind of disconnect.
The SEIU will spend $200 million between now and November on outreach to its members and other working-class voters in swing states.
Henry expressed confidence that union workers will turn up for Biden — as long, that is, as unions continue not just to make the case for his re-election but also aggressively organize to get their members and others to vote. “I can tell you from the polling we’ve done in SEIU that our members’ support for President Biden has not fallen off. The concern we have is whether our members are enthusiastic enough about the November election to just go vote.”
If the enthusiasm isn’t there, it won’t be for lack of trying on the part of unions. The SEIU will spend $200 million between now and November on outreach to its members and other working-class voters in swing states, making the case for Biden. Other unions have announced their own efforts. North America’s Building Trades Unions plans to target its own membership in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In Nevada, the politically powerful Culinary Workers Union recently announced it would undertake an extensive outreach campaign in the fall.
There’s plenty in the former president’s record with which these unions can make their case. Former President Donald Trump’s popularity among working-class voters is, to be blunt, a triumph of bluster over substance and presentation over reality. The former president says — in his usual smashmouth way — he is a friend of the common man. His actions demonstrate he is anything but.
Trump’s administration was a wrecking ball when it came to worker rights, rolling back multiple safety initiatives. His Supreme Court nominees were instrumental in a major ruling weakening public-sector unions. His appointees to the National Labor Relations Board made it harder for workers to unionize. During his administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration even removed the names of people who died in workplace accidents from the front page of its website. And since he left the White House, he has fought with the United Auto Workers and urged its members to stop paying their dues.
Biden’s strong pro-worker actions are a 180-degree turn from Trump’s record. He marched on a picket line last year with striking UAW members (a first for a sitting president) and met with Starbucks labor organizers. His NLRB appointments are more likely to back workers over employers. And he has been an aggressive advocate for nonunion workers. His administration’s ban on almost all non-compete agreements will most likely both increase entrepreneurial efforts and give America’s workers a wage boost of more than $500 a year. And, yes, the names of workers killed in workplace accidents are back on OSHA’s front page.
It’s all too easy to get discouraged and check out entirely.
Nothing highlights the difference between Trump’s and Biden’s attitudes toward working Americans better than how they both handled overtime compensation. Trump abandoned an Obama administration initiative to double the salary threshold under which workers would be eligible for mandatory overtime pay. Biden’s administration didn’t just restore the Obama-era rule; it raised the threshold to just over $56,000 annually, adding roughly 4 million new workers.
These differences need to be highlighted over and over and over again. Unfortunately, says Henry, many Democratic politicians are reluctant. “They don’t talk about the attack on unions and the need to allow workers to join together as a key part of their message,” she says. She adds that Democrats need to talk more about popular pocketbook issues like the federal minimum wage — still stuck at $7.25 an hour in many Southern and Midwestern states — and champion union rights and Biden’s accomplishments more strongly. Henry’s not wrong. According to The New Republic’s Tim Noah, a recent review of databases tracking Democratic candidate statements, social media posts and campaign ads during the 2022 election revealed relatively few House and Senate candidates emphasized kitchen table economics or Biden legislative achievements like the infrastructure bill or the Inflation Reduction Act. That is borderline political malpractice. These issues and achievements mean a lot to voters. But they won’t sell themselves. People, I’ve learned over decades of reporting on these issues, lead busy lives: They don’t spend their days thinking about political gains and losses. They are upset about inflation and the rising cost of living but aren’t aware of what Biden — or any politician, really — is doing (or not doing, as the case may be when it comes to Trump) to make their financial lives better. It’s all too easy to get discouraged and check out entirely. Unions have a unique ability to counter that information void and inertia, reframe the narrative and get people engaged — and, sometimes, enraged — politically. As Henry told me, “It takes organizing and leadership to help working people understand why they need to show up [at the polls] in historic numbers.” And she and the SEIU are committed to doing just that.
Helaine Olen
Helaine Olen is a managing editor at the American Economic Liberties Project. She is the author of "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry" and a co-author of "The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated." She has been a columnist for The Washington Post and Slate, and her work has also appeared in numerous other publications, including The New York Times and The Atlantic. 
