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White House task force urges dozens of measures to increase union membership in U.S.

President Joe Biden visits a plumbers union training facility in Lanham, Md., on August 4, 2021. File Photo by Oliver Contreras/UPI
1 of 2 | President Joe Biden visits a plumbers union training facility in Lanham, Md., on August 4, 2021. File Photo by Oliver Contreras/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 7 (UPI) -- A White House task force on Monday issued dozens of recommendations for increasing union membership after President Joe Biden's initial efforts to pass pro-worker legislation stalled in Congress.

The Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, headed by Vice President Kamala Harris and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, suggested 70 executive actions to be taken by the administration to "support worker empowerment" in line with Biden's 2020 election campaign platform.

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The actions include making the federal government a "model employer" in promoting "broader labor-management engagement" and providing greater access and information to unions seeking to represent and build membership among the federal workforce.

The panel also recommended that key federal agencies act to "expand awareness of workers' organizing rights and employers' responsibilities when workers are trying to organize," and that the federal government's purchasing and spending power be leveraged to "support workers who are organizing and pro-worker employers."

"Our goal is not just to facilitate worker power through executive action -- it is to model practices that can be followed by state and local governments, private sector employers, and others," the report's authors said.

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Biden and Harris, they wrote, "recognize that urgent action is needed," noting that last year only 10.3% of the U.S. workforce was represented by a union, which is down from more than 30% in the 1950s.

Yet, they added, "nearly 60 million American workers say they would join a union if given the chance," citing poll numbers showing 68% of Americans approve of labor unions -- the highest level on record since 1965.

Task force members said the moment is ripe to promote a rebound in unionism thanks in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has "focused new attention on the lives and challenges of working people."

The recommendations come after Biden's efforts to enact pro-union legislation during his first year in office failed due to unanimous opposition from Republican lawmakers as well as from some Democrats.

The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a sweeping pro-union bill protecting workers' rights to organize and allowing employers to be punished over wrongful termination, passed the House in March but has since failed to advance in the evenly-split Senate, where GOP leaders have held it up with the threat of a filibuster.

The bill was also included in the massive Build Back Better Act, which also stalled in the Senate due a handful of Democratic senators who blocked changes to the filibuster rules.

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Biden has also called for raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour and pushed for that to be included in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed last year.

The measure was removed, though, after the Senate parliamentarian ruled it didn't meet the guidelines for the budget reconciliation process, which allowed congressional Democrats to pass the package without any Republican support.

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