Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made their first joint presidential campaign appearance after the convention on Monday, celebrating Labor Day with a tribute to union members in Pittsburgh.
“We are so proud to be the most pro-union government in American history,” Harris said. “I love Labor Day. I love celebrating Labor Day, and Pittsburgh is the birthplace of the American labor movement.”
Amid comments about the administration’s support for unions and Donald Trump’s attacks on labor organizing, Vice President Harris spoke out against the pending takeover of US Steel by Nippon Steel, arguing that the iconic Pennsylvania steel company should remain in American hands.
“US Steel is a historic American company, and it is vital to our nation to maintain strong American steel companies. And I can only agree with President Biden: US Steel must remain American owned and American operated.”
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The United Steelworkers union, which represents about 10,000 U.S. Steel workers, is opposing the $14.9 billion deal. The union disagrees with Nippon Steel’s alleged violations of the union’s power-transfer rights under their four-year basic labor agreement signed in 2022. The union and the companies are engaged in arbitration talks.
Harris reiterated his support for the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a broad package of labor reforms that would boost union organizing.
Kenny Cooper, president of the IBEW union, introduced Biden and Harris, noting that Harris’s tie-breaking vote to pass the Butch Lewis Act saved the benefits of two million union members. “They were stuck for one reason,” he said. “We couldn’t find a Republican senator.”
Harris also cast the deciding vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, which USW International President David McCall said in remarks had “radically transformed the cement, chemical, glass and steel sectors, along with other traditional core industries.”
Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, also opposes the Nippon Steel deal and has said he will block it as president. Biden announced his opposition to the Nippon Steel deal in March.
Perhaps less pointedly than Harris, Biden outlined his administration’s accomplishments in Pennsylvania, from clean energy investments to infrastructure money. He noted that his administration required project labor agreements that respected labor rights and required American-made products, while reminding listeners that Donald Trump appointed union-busting officials to the National Labor Relations Board.
“Wall Street didn’t build America,” Biden said. “The middle class built America, and unions built the middle class.”
Biden and Harris’ appearance together provides a glimpse into how the two could campaign in the final days of the election. Biden described Harris as someone with “the backbone of a ramrod and the moral compass of a saint.”
Harris spent the morning in Detroit, touting the benefits of unionization — the five-day workweek, sick leave, vacation time and other perks — with union leaders at Northwestern High School.
“We celebrate unions because unions helped build America, and unions helped build the American middle class,” she said. “When union wages go up, everybody’s wages go up.”
Biden is the first sitting president to walk a union picket line, supporting the United Auto Workers in their dispute with major automakers in September 2023. “You — the UAW — you saved the auto industry in 2008 and before that,” Biden shouted through a bullhorn on the picket line in Michigan. “You made a lot of sacrifices, gave up a lot. The companies were in trouble. Now they’re doing incredibly well, and guess what? You should be doing incredibly well, too.”
Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, is both a vocal voice for revitalizing the American labor movement and a vocal opponent of Trump. “Donald Trump is all talk, and Kamala Harris does what he says,” Fain said at the Democratic National Convention in August, wearing a shirt that read “Trump is a scab.” Harris supporters chanted the phrase in Detroit this morning.
Although Trump called for Fain to be “fired immediately” in his acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention, the Republican nominee has reached out to working-class voters during his campaign to return to office. The renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and his proposed 10-20 percent tariffs on foreign trade have been central to his outreach, arguing that doing so will bring back production from offshore factories.
But Project2025 — a conservative playbook for a second Trump administration, drafted by the Heritage Foundation — aims to end merit-based employment for thousands of federal workers who belong to unions; calls for changes to “protected joint activities” that would allow employers to more easily respond to union organizing; and repeal the “persuader rule,” which requires companies to provide disclosures when hiring union-busting consultants.
Trump has also reversed his public comments about the electric car industry, initially calling for an end to electric car mandates but recently walking back that rhetoric after Tesla CEO Elon Musk endorsed his candidacy. During an interview on Musk’s X/Twitter social media space, Trump raved about Musk’s approach to labor relations.
“They’re going on strike,” Trump said. “I won’t name the company, but they’re going on strike and you say, ‘That’s okay. You’re all gone. You’re all gone. So every one of you is gone,’ and you’re the biggest.”
That prompted Teamsters President Sean O’Brien — who spoke at the RNC convention to the surprise of many union leaders — to walk back his own overtures to Trump. “Firing workers for organizing, striking, exercising their rights as Americans is economic terrorism,” O’Brien said.
