THE BIG LABOR PRESIDENT.

• Author: Welch, Matt
• Position: POLITICS - Joe Biden

SCORES OF MILLIONS of Americans have zero memory of living under a White House of, by, and for Big Labor. So we are going to have to make new memories to accurately assess President Joe Biden.

After repeatedly promising on the campaign trail to be "the most pro-union president you've ever seen," Biden has broken with all recent Democratic predecessors by actually governing like he means it.

On his first day in office, the 46th president fired National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Peter Robb, replacing him with former Communications Workers of America attorney Jennifer Abruzzo. On the same day, he rescinded some of Donald Trump's federal civil service reforms, declaring, "It is also the policy of the United States to encourage union organizing and collective bargaining."

Three days later, Biden announced the creation of a new Made in America Office inside the White House. The day after that, he signed an order saying federal agencies "shall...apply and enforce the [1931] Davis-Bacon Act and prevailing wage and benefit requirements," thus making government workers and contractors richer at the expense of taxpayers. He appointed Laborers' International Union of North America member Marty Walsh, the former mayor of Boston, as secretary of labor and created a Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, headed by Vice President Kamala Harris.

In February 2021, Biden took the step--"basically unprecedented in American history," University of Rhode Island historian Erik Loomis later told Vox--of endorsing a specific workplace unionization effort, at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. (The final tally in Bessemer was 1,798 votes against unionization, 738 in favor.)

The March 2021 American Rescue Plan sloshed $1.9 trillion into mostly governmental areas, where unionization rates are high. It included an $86 billion unconditional bailout for multi-employer pension funds, a Big Labor wish-list item that had zero to do with the bill's stated purpose of COVID-19 relief.

"Biden talks like the most pro-union president since the New Deal," The Washington Post concluded in April 2021 after an in-depth comparison of presidential labor rhetoric. Yet he was just getting started.

The November 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act gushed out another $1.2 trillion in federal spending, including a "Buy American" provision mandating that building materials for the law's road, bridge, and rail projects come primarily from the United...