Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen described her agency’s report Monday as “the administration’s latest action to strengthen the important role of labor unions in our economy.”
“It’s the Treasury Department’s first major effort to lay out the rationale for why we think this is so important,” she said.
“Union workers have been the backbone of America’s middle class, and yet for too long the contributions of union workers have not been fully appreciated,” Vice President Harris told reporters Monday.
The report comes amid several high-profile strikes and labor contract negotiations play out across the country.
“Heightened workplace safety norms can pull up whole industries. Union members improve their communities through heightened civic engagement; they are more likely to vote, donate to charity, and participate in a neighborhood project,” the report reads.
While the Biden administration has spoken positively about unions, it has also notably occasionally worked against them.
The administration and Congress intervened at the end of last year to avert a railroad strike, a move that frustrated many railroad workers.
“A disruption to our nation’s economy and supply chain has been averted. But the Senate also voted to reject the bill that would provide paid sick leave for all railroad workers. This leaves me baffled, exasperated, and deeply saddened,” Tony Cardwell, a railroad union president, said in a statement in December.
In July, Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien asked the White House not to intervene if union-represented UPS employees went on strike.
The Teamsters voted to ratify the agreement with UPS last week.
Support for unions is growing: More than 70 percent of Americans now approve of labor unions, the highest level since 1965, a Gallup poll found last year.
Yet union membership has notably declined in recent decades: just 10.1 percent of wage-earning workers were union members in 2022. That’s half of what it was in 1983, the first year membership data was recorded.
The “summer of strikes” is sparking a national conversation on labor, but whether the aministration’s optimism on unions takes root in the broader economy remains to be seen.
The Hill’s Tobias Burns has more here.
