THE BIG LABOR PRESIDENT

Welch assesses Pres Joe Biden. Labor issues generally did not rise above the considerable din kicked up by any conversation involving Trump. Yet it's not like Biden made any secret of his sympathies. Despite his half-century in government office, he has always maintained a regular-guy, blue-collar persona, complete with tall tales about family members from Irish coal mining stock. There is a big gap, however, between rhetorical nostalgia for the working-man struggles of yesteryear and the largely white-collar realities of 21st century Democratic Party unionism. Just 6 percent of the private-sector work force is unionized, down from 17 percent in 1983 and 36 percent in 1953, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics annual report in Feb 2022. The rate for the public sector, by contrast, was 34 percent in 2021, about the same as it has been for the last several decades. Biden would surely like to reverse that long private-sector slide. He has been pushing for the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would abolish "right to work" laws that prohibit unions from forcing nonmembers to pay dues in 27 states. But that bill, which also would classify millions of independent contractors as employees, is already dead on arrival in the 50-50 Senate during a midterm year when Democrats are likely to see steep losses.