Biden aims to prove he’s pro-labor with 2024 staff
WASHINGTON — Joe Biden likes to say he’s the most prounion president in U.S. history. When he announces his expected reelection campaign in the coming weeks, he’ll get the chance to prove it to his own staffers.
Workers on his 2024 campaign will be unionized, political allies say, making him the first president to run a reelection campaign with staff represented by a union. That means hammering out a collectively bargained agreement that could establish salary minimums, set work hours and offer overtime pay, among other things, easing the demands on a workforce that has historically been required to put in long hours for meager pay and guaranteed joblessness after Election Day.
The move allows Biden to further demonstrate to his base just how deep his pro-labor convictions are, providing a strong contrast with his Republican opponents, whose staffers aren’t likely to embrace unionizing. It also means extra work for those at the top of Biden’s campaign to negotiate a contract and could present financial and workforce constraints, but union organizers and Democratic operatives insist that having a unionized staff would only make Biden’s 2024 bid stronger.
“The marquee name, the person who’s running, wants the cred for being union,” said Janice Fine, a Rutgers University professor of labor studies and employment relations and director of the workplace justice lab@ru. “But the people who are running the campaign are going to have more trepidation because they know what it takes to actually lift up a campaign.”
It’s not unprecedented for a presidential campaign to be unionized, though Biden’s would be the largest unionized workforce by far. Democratic White House candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Julián Castro had unionized campaign staffs in 2020. Even Biden’s campaign unionized after clinching that year’s Democratic nomination. The Democratic National Committee’s staff is also unionized
Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign staff hasn’t unionized. The staffs of top Republicans thought to be readying presidential runs, including Florida Gov. Ron Desantis, probably won’t, either.
“In the old days, there were definitely Republicans who were pro-union,” Fine said. “But not now.”
Biden’s 2020 campaign only unionized that May, when it reached an agreement with field organizers represented by the Iowa-based Teamsters Local 238. As entry-level campaign employees, field staffers are often dispatched to different states. Their agreement established a six-day workweek, a $15-per-hour minimum wage and overtime for working more than 40 hours weekly.
This time, Biden’s campaign will unionize earlier in the process and may face pressure to apply the contract to more staffers, including some at its headquarters, given that the president’s administration has launched efforts to increase labor organization membership nationwide. Biden has hosted union organizers in the Oval Office, and the White House is paying interns for the first time since the 1970s.
“I told you I was going to be the most pro-union president in history,” Biden said recently. “And I’ve kept my promise.”