Bernie Sanders releases plan aiming to double union membership

By Mary Margaret Olohan

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders released a plan Wednesday aiming to double union memberships.

Dubbed the Workplace Democracy Plan, the Vermont senator hopes to increase union membership by January 2025. It also promises to make joining unions easier.

WIkimedia Commons/AFGE

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

“A Bernie Sanders administration will make it a priority to restore workers’ rights to bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions,” Sanders’ campaign website reveals.

“That is what the Workplace Democracy plan is all about.”

The plan promises to give unions the ability to organize through “a majority sign up process,” end right to work laws recently enacted by Republicans, enact provisions that ensure companies can’t prevent unions from forming, repeal Section 14(b) of the Taft Hartley Act, provide federal workers the right to strike, and more.

“Making it easier for workers to form unions is not a radical idea,” the campaign website adds. “62 percent of the American people support labor unions, but according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership is barely half of what it was 35 years ago.”

“In order to reverse the 40-year decline of the middle class, we must strengthen unions and restore bargaining power to workers,” Sander said. “And working together, that’s exactly what we will do.”

Sanders’ plan comes a day after President Donald Trump announced that he is considering “various tax reductions,” including a payroll tax cut, to give the U.S. economy a boost, and two days after the White House said “cutting payroll taxes is not something under consideration at this time.”

Trump’s words follow news  that the United States Steel Corporation plans to lay off fewer than 200 workers at a Michigan facility, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed Aug. 5. This follows the company’s decision to stop production at the facility in June, according to Reuters.

The layoffs follow what Trump said earlier in August at Shell Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex in Monaca, Pennsylvania, that his 25% tariff on foreign imports helped change the steel business from “dead” to “thriving.”

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Images courtesy of U.S. Senate and WIkimedia Commons/AFGE

6 thoughts on “Bernie Sanders releases plan aiming to double union membership

  1. What this guy won’t do or say to get votes.. He’s never accomplished a thing the whole time that he’s been a senator but he sure is good at running his mouth and getting his gullible followers to keep on donating.

  2. Looks as Bernie is casting a blind eye on the fact that right to work laws have freed many to chose on their own and not be forced to pay dues, and guess what, many are opting out. Unfortunately, many unions are run by fat cats who put themselves first at the expense of the dues paying rank and file. Further, one can’t but help notice that in recent times many employees choose to work in a union free environment by voting down organizers.

  3. If Sanders wants to fix the “decline of the middle class” he needs to focus on removing the taxes, fees and regulations for the liberal spending that he loves.

  4. 1965 we started a war on poverty at the height of union power and Bernie’s solution to todays problems is ignore the fact the shipping container changed the world and b/s people he has a plan ?

    • The problem is deeper then “shipping containers.” In the final analysis the real reason they exist are the EPA and OSHA regulations that caused the jobs to move to nations that don’t have them. Lower labor costs are only little part of the issue.

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