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.
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