AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and some of his organization’s largest affiliate unions are getting behind Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. But others are pushing Michigan Rep. Andy Levin, a former Service Employees International Union organizer.
Union leaders hope Biden will be able to enact policies to reinvigorate the labor movement, bringing in more members, money, and political influence while dramatically expanding collective bargaining rights and protections from workplace abuse.
While some in the labor movement are seeking to distance themselves, most are supportive even as they call for reforms.
Similar efforts were successful at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and at The Shed in New York City.
The Supreme Court’s ruling was expected to diminish union membership. But so far, many unions have actually increased their numbers since the verdict. Conservative groups are working to reverse that trend in the long run.
Jerry Wurf, the national president of the public workers union American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, considered the Memphis sanitation workers’ protest more than a strike; it became a social struggle, a battle for dignity. Wurf called the strike a “race conflict and a rights conflict.”
The new law bans public employee unions in most cases from negotiating over issues such as health insurance, evaluation procedures, staff reduction and leaves of absence for political purposes. Police officers and firefighters are exempted from that portion of the law, a move that AFSCME argues in the lawsuit violates the Iowa Constitution by creating "favored" and "disfavored" groups of government workers.
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