Politico: ‘Union Members Snub Biden for Trump’

Union leaders are trying to drag their members into Joe Biden’s column amid strong union support for President Donald Trump’s pro-worker policies, according to Politico.

Under the headline, “Rank-and-file union members snub Biden for Trump,” Politico reported:

“We haven’t moved the needle here,” said Mike Knisley, executive secretary-treasurer with the Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council, who estimated that about half of his members voted for Trump in 2016 and will do so again. “Even if given all the information that’s been put out there, all the facts — just pick an issue that the president has had his hands in — it doesn’t make a difference.”

Among members of North America’s Building Trades Unions, there is a dead heat in six swing states, with Biden receiving 48 percent of the vote and Trump 47 percent, according to an internal poll shared with POLITICO.

One of the driving issues is immigration, which floods U.S. labor markets with cheap, compliant illegal workers:

“He has a very, very, very solid foundation of our members,” said James Williams, a vice president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, whose surveys of members painted a similar picture. “They connect with his messaging and a lot of the fear-mongering going all the way back to when he was first elected with, ‘Be afraid of the immigrant. The immigrant’s here to take your job.’ That resonated with our membership. They feel like their way of life and their way of living is under attack and without really understanding the dynamics at play. I mean, the immigrant worker is being abused by employers.”

Some union leaders are trying to portray immigration is being pushed as a “social issue” that is somehow unrelated to jobs and wages, even though household wages rose by roughly seven percent in Trump’s lower-immigration 2019 boom.

Biden’s 2020 plan would dramatically increase immigration. It includes several proposals to expand the inflow of foreign workers and consumers into the United States. He promises to let mayors import foreign workers for local jobs, let companies import more visa workers for college jobs, expand the inflow of chain-migration migrants, suspend immigration enforcement against illegals, drastically increase the inflow of poor refugees, and also provide more health care and other aid to arriving migrants.

Democrats are also pushing legislation that allows illegal migrants to get qualifications for skilled, blue-collar jobs.

The massive inflow of migrants will lower Americans’ wages, transfer more wages to investors, and raise housing costs. It would also shift jobs from the interior states to the coasts, reduce investment in wealth-generating technology, and exacerbate the chaotic diversity that has damaged U.S. society and politics.

In contrast, Trump says he is pushing a “Pro-American Immigration” policy that is popular among white, Latino, and black blue-collar voters.

However, the union leaders told Politico that Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crash cost him much support among union members after he built support by denouncing cheap-labor migration and job-exporting free trade deals.