He has promised to be “essentially the most pro-union president main essentially the most pro-union administration in American historical past,” however like different occupants of the Oval Workplace, President Biden has at occasions run afoul of labor teams.
In December, he signed laws that imposed an settlement between rail firms and staff who had been locked in a bitter dispute. The invoice averted a strike that would have upended the economic system simply earlier than the vacation season, but it surely additionally curbed the efforts of staff and advocates who have been combating for provisions comparable to assured day off and paid sick go away.
Presidents are usually anticipated to be impartial arbiters between hanging laborers and the businesses they work for. On Monday, nevertheless, Mr. Biden informed reporters that he firmly stood with the United Car Staff, which is asking for elevated wages, shorter work hours and expanded advantages from three Detroit automakers: Common Motors, Ford and Stellantis, the mother or father of Jeep and Ram vehicles.
Different fashionable presidents have discovered it troublesome to discover a center floor between employers and staff.
In 1952, President Harry S. Truman tried to avert a strike of the United Steelworkers of America by nationalizing the metal trade, solely to be met with a lawsuit from metal firms.
Ten years later, President John F. Kennedy signed an govt order that gave federal staff the appropriate to collectively cut price, however he warned flight engineers and pilots in opposition to hanging that very same yr, telling them that it will be too damaging to the economic system.
In 1981, President Reagan fired over 11,000 hanging air site visitors controllers, undermining a union effort by arguing that federal staff have been in violation of an employment oath to not strike in opposition to the federal government. The choice traumatized the labor motion for many years.
