Transcript: Swamp Notes — the play for union power

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Swamp Notes — the play for union power’

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Sonja Hutson
Joe Biden has been on a bit of a charm offensive with labour leaders lately.

Joe Biden audio clip
The middle class built the country and unions built the middle class. (Audience clapping)

Sonja Hutson
Union bosses have called him the most pro-labour president in a generation. But do their members agree? This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News Briefing, where we talk about all of the things happening in the 2024 US presidential election. I’m Sonja Hutson, and this week we’re asking, could labour unions help decide the election? Here with me to discuss is Rana Foroohar. She’s the FT’s global business columnist and associate editor. Hi, Rana.

Rana Foroohar
Hey, Sonja.

Sonja Hutson
And we’ve also got Taylor Nicole Rogers, the FT’s US labour and equality correspondent. Hey, Taylor.

Taylor Nicole Rogers
Hey. Thanks for having me, Sonja.

Sonja Hutson
All right, so we’re talking about labour politics today. That’s labour with a lowercase l. Sorry, Keir Starmer. This week President Biden met with the head of Teamsters, which is one of the country’s biggest unions, and he was trying to get their endorsement. Trump also met with Teamsters back in January to try to do the same thing. Taylor, I wanna start with you. Which candidate seems to have the edge with union leadership this year?

Taylor Nicole Rogers
Joe Biden has an undeniable head start. And not just because he comes from the party that unions have endorsed for decades, but because he has been a big supporter of unions, walking picket lines, supporting lots of different policies that would strengthen labour laws for workers. But I think there’s a big caveat in that there’s still a lot of leaders in the labour movement who are disappointed that he wasn’t able to tick off every single thing on the list of promises that he made them in 2020. So they’re very publicly shopping around in a way that I think gives Trump a real possibility of winning more of the union vote than I would have predicted a year ago.

Rana Foroohar
I would actually jump in and maybe add a few beats to that. I think that union leaders were shopping around well before this administration. And in fact, one of the reasons that Trump came to power in 2016 was the feeling on both sides of the political aisle that the mainstream of both parties had sold out working people. And I think that Trump and Sanders — Bernie Sanders — were different sides of the same coin in 2016. And one of the reasons that you saw the Democratic party get behind Joe Biden and that he became the candidate, is that he was able to speak to those people in swing states. You know, I would just look actually in terms of the news at Biden stepping up just in the last couple of days and saying, hey, we maybe need to look a little more closely at that Nippon Steel bid for US steel. And that’s really about catering to the steelworkers, who are very concerned that they wanna see more from the president. They wanna see deeper actions. They wanna see more re-industrialisation. And I think Biden turning really on a dime and saying, let’s look at this Nippon deal is gonna be a way of saying to the steelworkers, we do care. This also reflects — you know, to kind of further build on what Taylor just said — there’s always a worry if he were to be elected for a second term, that you could see a kind of swing back to neoliberal business as usual. And so I think this is unions saying, hey, we’re not in the pocket. We want your promise that any kind of second term is gonna be as good as the first was, if not better.

Sonja Hutson
Yeah. How do they view Trump just on the other side of that coin?

Rana Foroohar
I think Trump’s evil genius, if I may say. The thing that was just political gold that he did was he said when he ran for office the first time, hey, everybody, there really is a smoky back room where elites are cutting deals in their own best interest. And that really resonated with a lot of working people that felt like, hey, the middle of both parties, establishment Republicans who are really about, you know, asset prices going up and, you know, just corporate business as usual and more corporatist Democrats who maybe are sort of comfortable in their social, progressive-social positions, but are rich and living on the coast and don’t really have to worry about what it’s like to shop at the Dollar General. They’re not my party, either. And Trump grabbed those people and ran with them. I think in some ways, Bidenomics, which is actually profoundly pro-labour in ways we can get into, is simply not as easy to message as, hey, we’re gonna slap tariffs on China, and that’s gonna bring your jobs back. Well guess what, that in and of itself won’t but it’s an easy thing to talk politically.

Taylor Nicole Rogers
I think that’s 1,000 per cent right. The one thing I would just add is I think people vote with their pocketbooks. And I think a lot of people remember stimulus checks. They remember exactly when prices went up at the grocery store. And so I think at union leaders are going to have to fight an uphill battle when it comes to saying the Biden administration has given us strength in contract negotiations when people are thinking back to what gas prices have done over the past four years.

Sonja Hutson
Well, given that, you know, these union leaders are gonna have to fight a little bit of an uphill battle to get their members on board with the endorsement of Biden. What does that tell us about what these endorsements mean? Like, are they not as potent as they used to be?

Rana Foroohar
I think it’s not like it would have been 25, 50 years ago where if the Teamsters president says X, that’s the way you vote. Unions are more diverse now, which means their beliefs and their cognitive perceptions are more diverse. That’s actually a good thing. Although it is creating, interestingly, some tension within the labour movement, you know, you can see the growth in diversity. I did a piece last week in the Weekend FT, I talked to four key labour leaders that are really in the thick of news in the US and among them it was one black man, three white women. If I had done that in, you know, maybe 20 years ago, it would’ve been four white guys, no question. I would also say this election, it’s very early days. I mean, we’ve got a long time until November. I think that as more labour leaders come out as democratic proxies, which I expect to happen — I actually believe, I’m gonna say it now and you can call me back in November if I’m wrong — I think there’s a big hidden Biden vote that we are not counting in the way that we didn’t count the hidden Trump vote in 2016.

Taylor Nicole Rogers
Rana is absolutely right in that there is no question that labour endorsements don’t mean the same thing that they meant, you know, 30, 40 years ago. But if we just want to look at, you know, 2016, 2020 to 2024, I think these endorsements have a lot more power than they did in the past two cycles, because we’ve seen a lot of unions mobilise in very public ways. We’ve seen the autoworkers, actors, screenwriters, the list goes on and on and on when really, really big pay raises and after having gone on strike or threatening to go on strike. And so I think people having had more contact with their union labour leaders and people thinking more about their unions because they’re in the headlines, gives this group a much bigger influence than they would have had last time.

Sonja Hutson
When we look at this map of key voting states going into November, how decisive do you think union workers could be in the election?

Rana Foroohar
I think they’re gonna be very, very important in swing states, which is where a lot of, the energy from both parties and both candidates are going. I think in Michigan, the fact that Shawn Fain of the UAW has come out and said Trump’s a scab, you had Biden walking in his picket line. I think that’s gonna be great for Democrats. I think Pennsylvania is really where the rubber meets the road. You know, I go there frequently. I think it’s a very interesting state. And you’ll see a lot of Trump signs. You’ll see a lot of Biden signs. But I think that this latest steelworkers action, it may be what tips things. If Biden dithers or if you see Trump coming out as he has done and saying, you know, Nippon Steel is a terrible deal, which of course is one of the reasons Biden is now saying, actually, we do need to look carefully at it. I think if you see wavering on the part of Biden, I think that that will swing Trump’s way in Pennsylvania.

Taylor Nicole Rogers
I don’t think that Biden has a path back to the White House without union workers. However, there’s another demographic that I think he might want to worry about more, and that is black voters, specifically in Georgia. But I don’t think that there’s any way he can win if he doesn’t hold on to union workers specifically in the states that Rana was just talking about.

Sonja Hutson
All right. I think that’s a good place to stop. We’re gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, we’re gonna do Exit Poll.

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Sonja Hutson
And we are back with Exit Poll, where we talk about something that didn’t happen on the campaign trail and apply rigorous political analysis to it. Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, who has not been seen in public for more than two months, released a family photo over the weekend that was so egregiously edited that Reuters and the Associated Press advised their members not to publish it. There is a lot more background to give on this, but I will spare you the details because I wanna get into the big question here. Is this better for Trump or Biden?

Taylor Nicole Rogers
This is plus five for Trump, like unequivocally. And I’m gonna tell you why. I think this conversation of: are the elites lying to us? Is something going on? Has Kate Middleton been kidnapped by Queen Camilla? Is she dead? And we don’t know, is she in a coma or whatever? That’s the kind of conspiracy theory that I think the Trump campaign uses very, very well. And the fact that I, as someone who, you know, typically is not really a truther is fully convinced that Kate is not well. I think could very easily have someone ask more questions. Well, if Kate Middleton is potentially, you know, in the basement of Kensington Palace in shackles, is Biden able to run the country? (Laughter)

Rana Foroohar
By the way, our British colleagues are actually very concerned about this. I just want you to know.

Taylor Nicole Rogers
I’m concerned about it. As someone who cares about human rights, I’m concerned about it. (Laughter)

Rana Foroohar
All right. I do not have the exper . . . I will not even claim to have nearly as much expertise on this analysis as Taylor, but I will say I’m 54. I don’t know how to manipulate a photo, and I fear that many people reading the FT, that is still the case. Possibly not as many listeners, but it just makes me feel old and that makes me feel pro-Biden. So I’m gonna say this is good for Biden.

Sonja Hutson
All right, I love it. That’s Exit Poll. I want to thank our guests. Rana Foroohar, she’s the FT’s global business columnist and co-author of our Swamp Notes newsletter. Thanks, Rana.

Rana Foroohar
Thank you.

Sonja Hutson
And thanks also to Taylor Nicole Rogers. She’s our US labour and equality correspondent.

Taylor Nicole Rogers
Thanks for having me.

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Sonja Hutson
This was Swamp Notes, the US politics show from the FT News Briefing. If you want to sign up for the Swamp Notes newsletter, we’ve got a link to that in the show notes. Our show is mixed and produced by Ethan Plotkin. It’s also produced by Lauren Fedor. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson. I’m your host, Sonja Hutson. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz, and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Check back next week for more US political analysis from the Financial Times.