politics

Moreover, in the face of partisan gridlock in the Senate, Biden and his congressional allies managed to enact legislation that was celebrated for its labor-friendly provisions and capacity to generate highly-compensated and unionized blue-collar jobs. Indeed, analysts project that the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which allocates more than a trillion dollars to upgrading the nation’s roads, airports, public transit systems, and electrical grids, along with the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, a massive federal investment in healthcare and clean energy, will together create millions of manufacturing, construction, and transportation jobs, the overwhelming majority of which will be subject to the Davis-Bacon Act’s prevailing wage mandate and many of which will be union.

To date, however, the Biden administration’s flagship labor achievements have come not through legislation but administrative action. To replace the ousted Peter Robb, Biden installed former labor lawyer Jennifer Abruzzo, who, strongly endorsed by unions, has been remarkably effective and successful and has rapidly emerged as the most pro-union GC in decades. Abruzzo has released a series of memos advising the Board to, among other things, ban captive audience meetings, expand the coverage of federal labor protections, strengthen the Board’s enforcement powers and remedial arsenal, and facilitate the union organizing process, policies which she has urged the Board to adopt in countless cases her office has prosecuted before the agency. For its part, the Board’s Democratic majority—including two Biden appointees—has proven largely receptive to the GC’s progressive proposals. The agency’s recent Cemex decision, for example, is one of several rulings and regulations the Biden Board has released to facilitate organizing and collective bargaining; it has excited labor proponents because of its potential to deter unlawful employer obstruction of organizing drives. Moreover, since Biden’s inauguration the NLRB has intensified its processing of ULP charges and election petitions—and unions have prevailed in a higher percentage of those proceedings.

Beyond his legislative and administrative agenda, Biden has consistently used his office to express solidarity with unions and enlarge their role in the public imagination. He has deployed impressively pro-union rhetoric throughout his presidency—far more than any of his recent predecessors—to rally support for organized labor and underscore its centrality to an egalitarian and democratic society. Biden criticized Kellogg’s use of permanent replacements in 2021, for example, and in 2022 he publicly encouraged efforts to organize Amazon. Most dramatically, the President, in a historical first, joined striking UAW workers on a picket line last month.