Source: In These Times
by Hamilton Nolan
“This week, the National Labor Relations Board announced that the number of union petitions the agency received rose 27% in the past year, and that the figure has fully doubled since 2021. It is proof that a good government can help satisfy the public desire for unions. It is evidence that organized labor’s investment in the Biden administration has, in some concrete way, paid off. Yet for the long-suffering labor movement, it has another, more ominous parallel to the 2024 presidential elections: The best rewards that the Democratic Party has to offer may not be enough to solve labor’s problems. The longer-term trends are more worrying than the current good news is reassuring. Did Joe Biden earn his self-proclaimed title as the ’most pro-union president’ of our lifetimes? Sure, probably. His genuine attentiveness to union demands certainly exceeded that of any Democratic president in the past half century.” (10/17/24)