Biden scores major union backing as its leaders attack Trump
CNN
Joe Biden will land a major union endorsement Wednesday from North America’s Building Trades Unions, whose leaders say the president has his infrastructure bill largely to thank for it.
Joe Biden will land a major union endorsement Wednesday from North America’s Building Trades Unions, whose leaders say the president has his infrastructure bill largely to thank for it. In making one of their earliest ever presidential endorsements, NABTU leaders are kickstarting an eight-figure organizing program to try to deliver their 250,000 members in the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin for Biden. The Teamsters, whose endorsement is being pursued by both Biden and Donald Trump, are members of NABTU but abstained from Tuesday’s board vote, according to people briefed on the proceedings. They will endorse after their own upcoming convention. The backing from NABTU, which has 3 million members nationwide, is more enthusiastic than its 2020 backing of Biden. And it comes at a moment when a significant slice of union rank-and-file has split from traditionally Democratic-aligned union leadership in ways that are reverberating through elections. That’s raised questions about the political future of the next generation of union members. It’s “almost like the perfect leader was sent at the perfect time for working people,” NABTU President Sean McGarvey told CNN about Biden in an interview announcing the endorsement. Biden will appear at the union’s conference in Washington on Wednesday to officially get the nod – which union leaders also want to be seen as a stark rebuff of Trump, who eagerly solicited support from union members and leaders during his time in office, but, their leaders say, didn’t deliver. NABTU had called for Trump to resign after the January 6, 2021, insurrection.