United States | News & Politics

Obamacare

That depends on what you're talking about when you say "worker." The people who benefited the most were younger people, poor people, women, and monitorities, so not the average 9-5 lower middle to middle class worker (factory, construction, etc), and certainly not the middle to upper middle office worker, but people who work in fast food, seasonal labor, and janitorial staff. Basically, if you weren't offered insurance at work, you probably benefited. For nearly everyone else, insurance got more expensive.

But yes, that's about the closest Democrats have gotten to benefitting workers recently. But it more benefited the underemployed and minorities, so I see it as Obama seeking to expand support among those groups.

Biden's vocal support

Pfft, that was mostly to avoid economic distruption and thus a political nightmare. A quick resolution to the strike benefited him more than the workers (midterms were coming up, food prices were already high, etc).

Let's look at the deal. Workers wanted 15 days of paid sick leave and better working conditions. What they got was 1 day off paid sick leave, allegedly lower penalties for unpaid time off, and a pay increase (24%), which from my reading largely caught them up with inflation. Here's a quote:

Even the best-case scenario doesn’t look like a massive victory for labor, but the devil is in the details

Vocal support doesn't put food on the table, actual, passed bills do.

The bills Biden has championed are largely around green energy and infrastructure (mostly trains and highways). I guess this tangentially benefits workers (more construction projects, slightly better mass transit, etc), but I see it benefitting shareholders and company owners more (green energy and construction company ownership), as well as himself (big bill he can point to in the debates).

If he actually cared about workers and unions, he would've struck a better deal with the rail workers and passed bills protecting people seeking to unionize. But instead we get what we always get from politicians, a lot of hot air.