By Nandita Bose
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will attend a union convention in Philadelphia on Tuesday as he seeks to deepen relationships with organized labor and improve his approval ratings and popularity among Democrats, which have taken a hit recently.
Biden will speak at the AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention, which is held every four years, and where labor leaders chart strategy. The labor federation comprises 57 affiliated unions and 12.5 million workers.
It is led by Liz Shuler, the federation’s first female president, who replaced longtime labor leader Richard Trumka, who died last year.
Biden, who is often called the “most pro-union president” by labor leaders, has continued to throw his support behind unions and collective bargaining.
He has ousted government officials whom unions deemed hostile to labor, reversed Trump-era rules that weakened worker protections and established a White House labor taskforce to reverse a decades-long decline in union membership.
More recently, Biden met with a new generation of union organizers at the White House, warned major businesses that their workforces would seek to unionize with his support and has supported a push on Capitol Hill that allows for congressional staffers to unionize.
Support from unions was key to Biden’s win in key swing states in the 2020 election. Biden won 57% of union households nationwide compared with 40% for former President Donald Trump, according to Edison Research.
Only 10.3% of the U.S. workforce was represented by a union in 2021, down from more than 30% in the 1950s, the White House said in February. The numbers are even lower for private-sector employees, where union membership has fallen to 6.1% in 2021 from 16.8% in 1983.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Sam Holmes)
