Harris to advocate for ‘good-paying, union jobs’ in anti-union North Carolina
Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Durham Wednesday to promote “good-paying, union jobs” in North Carolina — one of the country’s least friendly states to union activity.
Labor Secretary Marty Walsh will join the vice president to discuss “the Biden-Harris administration’s investments in our workers,” Harris’ office said in a statement. Location details for their visit had not been announced as of Tuesday afternoon.
North Carolina features the country’s second lowest union activity, according to figures from the U.S. Dept. of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. North Carolina and South Carolina have routinely traded rank as America’s least unionized state, with 2.6% and 1.7% of workers, respectively, belonging to unions in 2021.
Targeted legislation has long undercut union power and proscribed collective bargaining in some industries. A 1959 law bans union negotiation on behalf of public-sector employees, and North Carolina’s “right to work” law prevents employers from mandating union membership.
Union proponents argue such regulation has empowered big businesses and government employers to overlook workplace violations and maintain inadequate worker salaries.
“The pandemic was certainly a pivotal shift in the collective consciousness of workers realizing that their bosses literally don’t care if they die,” said Dante Strobino, a Durham-based organizer with the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union. “When an essential worker comes to work to provide an essential service — whether that’s sanitation or nursing or meatpacking — and they see that literally their boss doesn’t care to put in place the bare minimum protection to keep them safe... it makes them realize that they cannot rely on the government anymore to keep them safe. Their only means to their survival and to keep them safe is to organize a union, to band together to pressure their boss immediately to make changes.”
Pandemic conditions have fomented labor strikes across the state and generated renewed calls for union protections. From restaurant employees to school bus drivers, workers are calling for change.
“I’m unionizing because I want to be treated as a human being and not a robot,” Sharon Gilman, a Starbucks worker, previously told The News & Observer. Her Raleigh location became the 87th of the international coffee chain to move toward unionization.
“I want my health and well-being to be put before store operations,” Gilman said, “and I want my fellow partners to have a positive work environment where we all feel appreciated for our hard work.”
Since before assuming the presidency in 2021, Joe Biden has claimed he would be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” His vocal support marked a distinct departure from former President Barack Obama’s reticence to back declining union influence and is a 180-degree turn from the Trump administration.
The Biden-Harris administration’s ongoing campaign to revitalize union power may feature in a broader strategy to curry favor with working-class voters, many of whom supported Donald Trump in the last two elections.
“I think Biden and Harris want to come to Durham because they’re responding to the movement of workers assembling, organizing, mobilizing to challenge the way things have worked,” Strobino said.
But some think increased union activity would discourage major employers from settling in North Carolina, thereby weakening the state’s robust economy.
“As North Carolina approaches the 75th anniversary of its right-to-work law this month, it’s disappointing to see Vice President Kamala Harris visit the state to tout labor unions,” said Mitch Kokai, a political analyst at the John Locke Foundation, a conservative policy organization. “...Since the General Assembly embarked on a path of major tax reform nearly a decade ago, the economic engine has sped along even more quickly. If our state’s economy suffers for lack of union activity, no one told the people continuing to stream into North Carolina every day. They see a state filled with opportunity. Increased unionization would do nothing to improve that picture. It likely would have the opposite impact.”
Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger told the N&O that increased unionization would weaken the state’s bargaining power with prospective companies.
“The Biden-Harris administration has been an unmitigated disaster for the economy,” he said in an emailed statement. “It’s a pretty safe bet that whatever Vice President Harris is ‘selling’ is wrong for North Carolina and wrong for America.”
With the Republican-controlled legislature unlikely to repeal laws undermining union power, organizations such as Strobino’s may never secure appreciable negotiating power in North Carolina. But “real union power” is in its united front, he said.
“While we cannot get a binding contract, which is what some people think is the defining characteristic of being a union,” Strobino said, “we think the defining characteristic of being a union is just workers banding together and standing up and speaking up for their rights and confronting injustice.”
This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 2:08 PM with the headline "Harris to advocate for ‘good-paying, union jobs’ in anti-union North Carolina."
