Under its Chair, Vice President Kamala Harris, the White House workers’ task force released a report supporting pro-union policies for workers within the federal government. The report includes almost 70 recommendations that all promote unionizing practices within federal agencies.
A White House official confirmed to CNN the ‘Worker Organizing and Empowerment’ report was submitted to President Biden in October 2021, and it has just been made public by the White House workers’ task force. It confirms the president accepted and agreed with the recommendations. The report suggests to, “promote worker organizing and collective bargaining for federal employees, and workers employed by public and private-sector employers.”
The White House official also confirmed CNN in a statement, “As the President has said, ‘unions built the middle class.’ They ‘lift up workers, both union and non-union.’ At its core, it is our administration’s belief that unions benefit all of us. The Biden-Harris Administration believes that increasing worker organizing and empowerment is critical to growing the middle class, building an economy that puts workers first, and strengthening our democracy.”
While the report itself highlights several unionizing points, “The recommendations include ways to increase private sector workers’ access to information about their existing right to join and/or organize a union, and the legally-defined process of how to do so.”
The White House workers’ task force was created by President Biden in April 2021, especially for the sake of pro-union policy-making from within the administration, by executive order. Before the 2020 presidential elections, Biden was clear about being the “most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” The promise seemed to have worked out when the White House Task Force was established, chaired by Vice President Harris, to deliver a report within 180 days. The report’s agenda was to help uplift current policies into pro-union programs as well as find gaps where new practices and policies need to be established.
The General Services Administration and the Department of Interior are both included in the federal agencies that account in the report, which recommends that it must be ensured that “federal contract dollars are not spent on anti-union campaigns,” while there also be complete elimination of “barriers to union organizers being able to talk with employees on federal property about the benefits of organizing a union.”
If followed through, these recommendations can change lives for thousands of federal workers within the administration, who have been vocal about their treatment within the House.
