What Joe Biden could do to win working class votes

On the fourth night of the Democratic National Convention, presidential nominee Joe Biden had a remote roundtable discussion with a number of union representatives. "Unions built America," said Biden. That is correct — but Biden was extremely vague about what should be done in future. Here are a few tips for how Biden and the Democratic Party could secure the union vote both now and in the future.

First, Biden could get behind repealing the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which set up multiple serious obstacles to union organizing and restricted the political liberty of workers in general. It banned sympathy strikes, secondary boycotts, and allowed for states to legalize the open shop. Reversing those coercive legal restrictions would help workers secure a fair share of the income they produce. If he wanted to go even further, Biden could endorse sectoral bargaining to extend union contracts over whole categories of industry, codetermination to put workers on corporate boards, and worker ownership funds to give labor some control over the wealth of the firms where they work.

There is some of this in Biden's campaign platform, to be fair. But I suspect that the most important thing to do for the Democratic Party's future fortunes is to actually deliver on some of these ideas. Donald Trump only lost union households by 8 points — the best margin for a Republican since 1984 — in part because he talked about slanted trade deals and other neoliberal disasters that were passed under Democratic presidents and did terrific damage to American manufacturing. The Democratic Party has a credibility gap on workers and unions, and should Biden win this year, he should demonstrate that he isn't just another fake friend.

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