Back here in the U.S., Labor Day, the holiday to celebrate American workers, is a moment when labor unions hold parades and picnics to celebrate their role in giving members a voice in the workplace. But in an election year, Labor Day is also about politics. And as NPR's Don Gagne reports, this year labor is playing an especially visible role in the presidential race:
If you're looking for an example of how unions and the election are intertwined, look no further than the United Auto Workers' combative president, Sean Fein:
"Kamala Harris is one of us. She's a fighter for the working class. And Donald Trump is a scab."
That was at the recent Democratic National Convention, where a parade of union leaders spoke. Other high-profile speakers also gave labor a shout-out. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez embedded hers in this attack on Trump:
"And I, for one, am tired of hearing about how a two-bit union buster thinks of himself as more of a patriot than the woman who fights every single day to lift working people out from under the boots of greed, trampling on our way of life."
Democrats need labor to turn out. Liz Shuler is the president of the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor organization. She says in key battleground states, union members make up 20 percent of the vote. Plus, it's also significant that public support for unions is the highest it's been since the 1960s. We've had historic highs the last several years. Young people under the age of 30 are the most pro-union. So what does that speak to? It speaks to the fact that the economy has been broken for young people for way too long. Meanwhile, Donald Trump also sees union support as key. But he doesn't need a majority of voters there. He just needs to shrink the Democrats' traditional lead with labor. That's what helped him carry Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and the presidency in 2016. But four years later, Joe Biden won each of those states, in part by restoring Democrats' level of support with unions. Which brings us to this year. Here's Trump at the Republican National Convention:
"And the leader of the United Auto Workers should be fired immediately, and every single auto worker, union and non-union, should be voting for Donald Trump."
Mike Hinton is a General Motors retiree who talked to NPR as he headed to a Trump rally this summer in Saginaw, Michigan. Personally, he says he ignores his union's candidate endorsements. Here's why this former Democrat backs Trump:
"We're a mess overseas. They don't respect us over there. I says our economy is out of hand for the elderly folks especially, and we need a change and we need to get them back in there to get things under control again."
Still more common are union members like Raquel Harvey, who was cheering on the Harris Walls ticket when they held a rally at a UAW local outside Detroit. Harvey says she does want to hear what her union thinks about candidates:
"Anybody the UAW endorses, you know, they support the working class, so it has a big effect on, you know, my decisions that I will make when I'm voting."
Unions are also stepping up their social media presence, like this UAW TikTok with audio of Trump joking with Elon Musk about firing workers who strike:
"But they go and strike and you say, that's okay, you're all gone."
But even with all the increased social media, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler says the most important way to reach union voters is still union members talking at work, in the break room, or after hours:
"Union members will be the ones who will be at the center of their communities, educating voters, bringing their friends and family and their neighbors and coworkers to the polls. That old-fashioned person-to-person getting people to the polls is what the labor movement's bread and butter is."
The election is nine weeks from tomorrow. Shuler sees it as a sprint, with union activists trying to reach a critical group of voters. Don Gagne, NPR News, Detroit.
I think you missed the big triangle you have to click on.
Here's a transcript:
Election workers, the vast majority of them women, say they're feeling vulnerable to the charged political climate surrounding the 2024 election. 38% of the women staffing the polls say they've experienced threats, harassment, or abuse, fueling the violence, disinformation, and conspiracy theories following the 2020 election.
Joining us now, Elizabeth Landers, lead correspondent for the Scripps News Disinformation Desk.
"And Liz, you traveled to Surrey County in North Carolina to really dig deep on this. What did you find?"
"We traveled there back in June to get a sense of how disinformation is impacting election workers, specifically the almost all-female team that heads up Surrey County's elections. This is a small county. It's about 70,000 people. It's best known as the birthplace of Andy Griffith. And it's overwhelmingly a red Republican area, went 75% for the former president in 2020. Despite that though, and despite him winning that area, this small community has been dealing with mis- and disinformation around the elections since they took place."
"And the woman who heads up the elections there is Michelle Huff. She's a team of just four other people helping her administer these elections. They're working on this year-round. She described to us how things have changed since 2020. Take a listen."
"And Allie, disinformation in Surrey County for Michelle really reached a head in 2022. She said there were people that showed up at their office, confronted her about their voting systems, were asking her to see the voting machines, which the North Carolina State Board of Elections says that would have been illegal to give access to people who are not allowed to be around voting machines, that access to critical infrastructure there. They said they had evidence that the voting machines were pinging cell towers in 2020. So they were pushing conspiracies and unfounded information to her."
"And Michelle has said that she has had to harden their office, make changes there that she never thought that she would have to consider the safety of herself, her staff, her family. But really, she has in the last four years. And she is concerned about this in the lead up to the election in November."
"It makes a lot of sense, especially given the fact that this is a county that went so squarely for Trump. And yet the aspersions and bad faith that he has put upon the election system writ large are clearly even playing out in red counties. So then given what we saw in 2020, given what she's experiencing in counties like this one, what's being done to protect election workers? And I also imagine that this is impacting the number of people who want to be election workers."
"Absolutely. The Brennan Center for Justice, who we interviewed for this piece, says that they are losing election workers at sort of an unprecedented rate right now. People just don't want to do this kind of work because of these threats and harassment that they're dealing with. And in addition to that, they're losing the institutional knowledge. There's a lot of minutiae that are involved in election administration. Every state in this country has a different way that they administer these elections. So the Brennan Center is concerned about that."
"And I would also just add to that 80 percent of these election workers in this country are female. So part of the reason that we were focused on this story is because we've been tracking how disinformation is impacting women over at Scripps News. We've been kind of doing a series on this. And this is really impacting election workers because so many of them are women across the country, Allie."
"Really great reporting, Liz. It's going to have a long tail as we go into the 2024 election cycle. Thank you for tracking it and thank you for bringing it to us."