United Steelworkers union endorses Biden

If you don't earn over a million dollars a year then it's obvious that Biden is the right choice

The guy who broke the strike of an absurdly profitable rail company?

I mean it's a choice between open contempt for the workers, and open contempt, but occasionally putting on a union hat for a photo op before either doing nothing or siding with management.
- If you actually look at the details of the story you're taking about you'll find that after Biden ordered them back to work he then ALSO got the train companies to give the workers everything the union had been asking for
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute
- There were 458,900 workers involved in work stoppages in 2023, notably including the even-more-unprecedented-than-the-rail-strike motion picture strike and the autoworkers strike. You can believe, if you want to, that Biden is anti-union and he just overlooked his responsibility to shut down the 458,900 people who did work stoppages in 2023. Personally my feeling is that he shut down the rail strike because it would have a big impact on the rest of the economy, then his labor department kept working the issue and got the workers the sick days they were fighting for in the first place by having the strike.
  
  Is your assertion here that United Steelworkers just fucked up and endorsed a rabidly anti-union candidate because they're not as up to speed on labor issues as you are?

There has been controversy before where Unions endorse a candidate, and then a few days later we find out it was just union leadership picking a favorite.

The union’s endorsement was the culmination of a months-long process that included surveying USW members regarding their top priorities. The union also sent prospective presidential candidates in both parties a detailed questionnaire to determine where each of them stands on key issues affecting working people.

"Our members told us that they value retirement security, affordable health care and labor laws that support our ability to form unions and negotiate strong contracts,” said McCall. “President Biden’s record on all these issues speaks for itself. He also laid out a strong plan for building on this momentum well into the future.”

https://m.usw.org/news/media-center/releases/2024/usw-endorses-joe-biden-for-reelection-as-president

So basically all this means is Biden gave the right promises.

Lots of Republicans when asked about specific issues are a lot more progressive than Biden. They just will never vote anything besides R.

So this feels less like an endorsement from the 1.8 million members, and more of an advertisement to them.

Clever progression

Union leadership doesn't always represent their members well (true)

Union leadership didn't represent their members well in this case (not proven, just asserted)

They obviously didn't look at what Biden actually did, including some specific things listed in the article, because they wouldn't care about that kind of thing or deal with it as part of their working day (false)

Republicans are more progressive than Biden (the total-nonsense statement that serves to throw a smokescreen of confusion around any factual discussion surrounding the earlier more coherent statements)
- yeah wtf was that astroturf ass top comment?
  
  thank you for this breakdown 🙏
How could it be anything else? A union that forces its members to vote a certain way would be illegal.
- I might not have done a good job summarizing, here's an old article
  
  https://www.labornotes.org/2019/09/members-demand-voice-their-unions-presidential-endorsements
  
  So in 2016 a bunch of unions endorsed Hillary and everyone celebrated.
  
  Then a few days later we started hearing about the only union members who wanted her in the primary was the heads who had been getting wined and dined by her campaign.
  
  There was a large public outcry and unions said they'd do better.
  
  They're now asking for a sample survey on issues, taking candidates at their word, and then making ng an endorsement.
  
  It's better than it was, but nowhere near as good as letting union members submit a vote if they want and whoever gets the most wins the unions endorsement.
  
  I don't know how you thought at any point I meant unions could force their members to vote a certain way. What I meant is these endorsements are supposedly to literally be the union as a whole endorsing the candidate that represents them most, rather than u ion leadership trying to sway their members vote
  
  Which is what this is.

What the fuck is going on in the comments here?

It's even worse here.

Literally the topic of the OP article is "If you look at what the economic situation is for workers in the US, it's almost as good as it was pre-Covid which is a goddamned miracle. It's not perfect, still a lot of people are struggling, but $15/hr being the new more-or-less entry level minimum wage and some increased union membership has produced real progress especially at the bottom end of the scale, when a lot of first-world economies are still struggling to dig themselves out even back to normal. Wage inequality is down, unemployment is the lowest it's been in decades, etc etc, Biden deserves some credit for that. Here are detailed citations to back all that up. It's weird that that's not the popular perception."

Then, go look at the comments and read them through. It's literally a nonstop tide of rando user accounts saying "but inflation stacks year on year, they don't know basic math" and "they just think stocks going up means the economy's better, they don't care people are hurting" and "my grocery bill is high things are real bad, I'm suffering, this article's not true." It's almost impossible to read the comments front to back and hold on in your head to the fact that they're objectively wrong. It's like Goebbels's propaganda theory in real time -- if you grab out one individual comment and analyze it and really think about it, compare it to evidence, it falls apart. But looking at them all together it really looks like there's this groundswell of opinion. It also makes it more or less impossible to actually have a conversation about the article because it gets swarmed with people talking discouraging nonsense and being apparently incapable of absorbing anything different.
- holy smokes ur right, it’s so bad (or maybe im so weak willed) that i genuinely can’t tell if you are the one full of b.s. or not (no offense to you im just trippin out over this)
Organized election trolling starting to consider Lemmy?
- Organized election trolling starting to consider Lemmy ?
  
  FTFY
i am afraid

Biden made it illegal for rail workers to strike, fuck this DNC shill nonsense. I will not be voting for Democrats or Republicans ever again.

He later got them everything they wanted, and they have since endorsed him.

Edit: he later got them the sick days they wanted, on top of pushing through the contract that only a handful of the 12 unions hadn't ratified. I guess it's not technically "everything they wanted" but it's certainly more than the unions that ratified the agreement were expecting.
- He later got them everything they wanted,
  
  that's a lie
- it’s certainly more than the unions that ratified the agreement were expecting.
  
  what makes you think that?
- He did not. You are supporting our important rail workers only getting 5-7 sick days PER YEAR. Fuck your privileged liberal ass
kid named spoiler effect:
ok, but are you voting stein, west, or de la cruz?
- Stein, I also support De La Cruz though

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The 1.2 million-member union, which also backed Biden in 2020 over Trump, represents workers in auto supply, glass, rubber, chemicals, pulp and paper, mining and other industries.

Union President David McCall said Biden’s leadership allowed workers to carve out more room for bargaining and better support for the middle class.

“His vision and leadership allowed our nation to strengthen workers’ access to collective bargaining, grow the middle class, and embark on a path to widespread prosperity.”

Biden has touted himself as the “most pro-union president in American history” and gotten backing from various labor unions, including the United Auto Workers, SEIU and the AFL-CIO.

McCall added that Trump has not reached out to him and the former president’s campaign didn’t even respond to its issues survey they sent out to all prospective presidential candidates in both parties.

The union’s leaders met with Biden last week while also previously meeting with third-party candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West.

The original article contains 309 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 49%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Damn, nice to know Biden will have at least 10 votes this time around when the stupid-ass-orange-fuhrer wipes the floor w/ his genocidal ass.