Portside

At the Democrats’ convention in Chicago this week, organized labor is going to play a starring role in stumping for Vice President Kamala Harris. But she still needs to win over some of the rank-and-file union members who have drifted toward former President Donald Trump.

Union leaders say many of their members are thrilled about Harris, a stalwart labor ally, after harboring doubts about President Joe Biden’s age. But underneath that surge of enthusiasm, they acknowledge that Trump still appeals to some of their members, and Harris’ success in the election could hinge on her ability to win over union swing voters.

“It’s no secret that over the course of time, he’s been very effective at messaging to working-class people,” said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, of Trump. “The way he communicates on economic issues can be appealing because he talks about unfair trade policies that have decimated the Midwest and offshored jobs.”

The vast majority of top labor leaders and unions have thrown their support behind Harris, including the AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union, North America’s Building Trades Unions and the United Auto Workers.

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 endorsements. 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.

O’Brien himself signaled a possible change in direction last week when he assailed Trump for talking about firing striking workers during an interview with tech mogul Elon Musk on the platform X, saying that such an act is “economic terrorism.”

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have carved out time in the first few weeks of their condensed campaign to rally with unions publicly and get on the phone with them in private. But she is still defining herself to voters and doesn’t yet have the benefit of a national, decadeslong “Union Joe” political brand.

In the immediate days following Biden’s exit from the race, Harris spoke to more than a dozen top labor leaders across sectors. Among them were North America’s Building Trades Unions President Sean McGarvey and the head of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Kenny Cooper.

Harris aides believe that she has a strong case to make to union voters due to her record in the administration and elected office in California, including that she chaired a White House task force on worker empowerment and fought wage theft as attorney general in California.

Her team also thinks she has a solid argument for gaining the backing of Teamsters members, specifically, having cast the tie-breaking vote for a law that provided tens of billions to prop up beleaguered pension plans.

While Harris has long had close ties to unions in California, she has worked in recent years to develop relationships with key union figures outside of the state as well. As vice president, she squeezed in multiple off-the-record meetings with local labor leaders during her trips to states such as Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada, according to a person familiar with the conversations who was granted anonymity to discuss the issue.

She also brought Claude Cummings Jr., a civil rights leader and president of the Communications Workers of America, as well as his wife into her West Wing office, the person said, where she showed them artwork from Bloody Sunday. And Harris and then-Labor Secretary Marty Walsh met with Google contract workers in Pittsburgh to congratulate them for voting for a union.

A spokesperson for Harris pointed to a recent memo by the vice president’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, that said Harris is “building on the gains the Biden-Harris ticket made with union households in 2020” and that “union workers across the battleground states are mobilizing to elect Kamala Harris.”

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.

The union also released a digital video airing the clip, which has received nearly 2 million views. Other labor groups, including the Culinary Workers Union and Communications Workers of America, followed suit.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

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 comments at 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.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton won union voters nationally by only 17 percentage points, compared to Barack Obama’s 34 percent in 2012, according to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Some analysts argued the differencewas a major factor in Clinton losing the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Four years later, Biden improved on Clinton’s showing, even if he didn’t match Obama’s support. He won union voters by 22 points — and the White House.

Nick Niedzwiadek and Juan Perez, Jr. contributed to this report.