Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court election next spring already had high stakes, with majority control on the line. But a judge’s ruling this week restoring collective bargaining rights to roughly 200,000 teachers and other public workers in the state further intensifies the contest.
The liberal-controlled court has already delivered a major win to Democrats by striking down Republican-drawn legislative maps. Pending cases backed by liberals seek to protect abortion access in the state and kneecap Republican attempts to oust the state’s nonpartisan elections leader.
Now, the court could be poised to notch another seismic win for Democrats, public teachers and government workers by restoring the collective bargaining rights they lost 13 years ago in a fight that decimated unions, sparked massive protests and emboldened Republicans who later restricted rights for private-sector unions.
Liberals gained the majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the first time in 15 years following a 2023 election that had deep involvement from the Republican and Democratic parties, broke turnout records and shattered the national record for spending on a court race.
Abortion took center stage in that race. Now, it appears that union rights could be a major issue in the 2025 contest to replace a retiring liberal justice.
“You can make the argument that this race is more important than the race for the Legislature or the governor,” said Rick Esenberg, president of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said Wednesday. “I don’t think you can understate the importance of this race to the voters, no matter which side of the political divide you are on.”
The April 1 election will pit Brad Schimel, a Republican judge who supports President-elect Donald Trump and served as Wisconsin’s attorney general from 2015 until 2019, against Susan Crawford, a liberal judge whose former law firm represented teachers in a lawsuit that sought to overturn the anti-collective bargaining law.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court, then controlled by conservatives, upheld the law known as Act 10 in 2014.
Crawford’s past attempt to overturn Act 10 raises questions about whether she could rule objectively on it, Schimel said in a statement to The Associated Press. His campaign on Monday branded Crawford as a “radical” and said she would be a “pawn” of the Democratic Party if elected.
Schimel, when he was attorney general, said he would defend Act 10 and opposed having its restrictions applied to police and firefighter unions, which were exempt from the law.
Treating public safety workers differently from others makes the law unconstitutional, Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost ruled Monday. He sided with teachers and restored collective bargaining rights, a decision affecting about 200,000 workers in the state, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
The Republican-controlled Legislature promptly appealed.
Crawford’s former law firm is not involved in the current case.
Crawford didn’t directly address a question from the AP about whether she would recuse herself from any case involving Act 10. But her campaign spokesperson, Sam Roecker, said Crawford “will make a decision at that time about whether she can be fair and impartial, based on the particular facts and parties.”
Roecker said Schimel’s immediate condemnation of the court’s ruling Monday “shows he has already prejudged this case.” Schimel didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether he would recuse himself from any case involving Act 10.
The appeal of Monday’s ruling striking down Act 10 would typically first be heard by a state appeals court — a process that could take months. But the public workers who sued could ask the state Supreme Court to take the case directly, which would make it possible for a ruling before the new justice is seated in August.
Crawford has been endorsed by the state teachers union, which was gutted after Act 10 became law, as well as the Wisconsin Democratic Party and all four of the current liberal justices on the court. In addition to suing to overturn the anti-union law, Crawford also previously represented Planned Parenthood in a case to expand Wisconsin abortion access.
Christina Brey, spokesperson for the statewide teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, said she couldn’t speculate about whether Crawford would hear a case challenging Act 10.
Brey said Crawford won the union’s endorsement because “we believe she is going to be the most dedicated and most impartial, constitution-believing judge to put on the Supreme Court.”
Schimel is endorsed by Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, all five of the state’s Republican congressmen, the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, and a host of law enforcement agencies and officials, including 50 county sheriffs.
If Crawford wins, liberal control of the court would be locked up until at least 2028, the next time a liberal justice is up for election.
Candidates have until Jan. 1 to enter the April 1 race. The winner will serve a 10-year term.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin gives a victory speech Thursday at the Steamfitters Local 601 hall east of Madison after winning a third term Tuesday. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)
While a majority of Wisconsin voters helped elect Republican Donald Trump as president this week, one statewide candidate managed to defy the odds that favored the GOP.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin squeezed out enough votes to overtake Republican Eric Hovde and return to Washington, D.C. for a third term.
Although the victory was much narrower than her last reelection in 2018, the outcome preserved Baldwin’s winning streak.
“2024 marks a continuation of Tammy Baldwin’s record of undefeated elections,” Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said Thursday at a brief Baldwin victory celebration.
Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, introduces Sen. Tammy Baldwin at her victory celebration Thursday. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)
“The way we won this race is the way I’ve always approached this job,” a smiling Baldwin said in her 10-minute victory speech. “We did everything, everywhere, all at once. I traveled to red, blue, purple, rural, suburban, urban parts of our state. I listened to people. I really listen to people and then deliver for them, and in turn, these Wisconsinites showed up for me, and I’m so grateful.”
Baldwin is “uniquely good at cultivating her own brand and separating it from the national Democratic Party brand,” said Marquette University political scientist Julia Azari in an interview Thursday.
Democrats in Wisconsin often seem to do better in midterm elections, “where it is a little bit less nationalized and the candidates can cultivate their kind of personal and localized brands,” Azari said. “Baldwin has been pretty successful and she’s running ahead of Democrats statewide in a lot of contests.”
Baldwin got her political start on the Dane County Board, graduated to the Wisconsin Legislature and was elected to the U.S. House in 1998, the state’s first female and first gay member of Congress. After 14 years in the House, she was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012, the year Barack Obama won his second term.
In 2018, running against a Republican state senator, Leah Vukmir, Baldwin easily won reelection by nearly 11 points, while her fellow Democrat, Tony Evers, won his first term as governor by 1 percentage point.
Julia Azari, Marquette University
“She addresses more sort of state priorities, and has become well known in rural parts of the state that we don’t really associate with Democrats,” Azari said. Baldwin’s much narrower 2024 victory came in “a very difficult national environment for Democrats.”
Baldwin held her event Thursday at a Steamfitters union apprenticeship training center on the East Side of Madison.
Steamfitters Local 601 business manager Doug Edwards called Baldwin “a homegrown roots type of person” who has been “just fabulous for working families in Wisconsin” and a staunch union ally.
“Tammy has just been a good advocate for all the people in Wisconsin, and I think that’s what put her over the top, even though it was close,” Edwards said in an interview.
In her victory speech, Baldwin recapped the broad range of issues that she’s made her own as a lawmaker, along with the people behind those issues who have been her supporters.
“It’s the farmers in the dairy industry who I fought alongside, earning the endorsement of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau,” Baldwin said. “It’s the workers on foundry floors who are getting more business because of my Buy America rules — big shout-out to labor.”
Baldwin has successfully pushed congressional colleagues to include provisions favoring domestic suppliers and manufacturers in bills such as the bipartisan infrastructure law.
“It’s the LGBTQ families who saw through the nasty attack campaigns and knew that I had their back, and it’s the women who’ve had our rights stripped away and saw me on the front lines fighting for their freedom,” she added.
Baldwin has championed legislation to restore a federally protected abortion rights, ended in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade. The bill she authored has stalled in both houses.
Also in 2022, however, Baldwin argued that the loss of Roe meant that the Court’s 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage could be at risk. She spearheaded asuccessful bill that gained bipartisan support affirming same-sex marriage as well as interracial couples.
Baldwin also highlighted her involvement in the Affordable Care Act, for which she wrote a provision that allows children to remain on their parents’ health insurance plans until they reach the age of 26.
After four years in the Senate as a member of its Democratic majority, in January Baldwin will begin her third term as a member of the minority party. Throughout her tenure in Congress, however, Baldwin has repeatedly joined with Republicans on bills that have aligned with her own stances.
On Tuesday, her margin of roughly 30,000 votes was about the same as the margin by which Harris lost to Trump in Wisconsin. And the senator’s final tally was about 5,000 more than Harris’ — suggesting that some Wisconsin voters who picked Trump split their tickets to vote for Baldwin.
Baldwin diplomatically acknowledged the presidential contest outcome Thursday.
“While we worked our hearts out to elect Kamala Harris, I recognize that the people of Wisconsin chose Donald Trump, and I respect their choice,” Baldwin said.
“You know that I will always fight for Wisconsin, and that means working with President Trump to do that, and standing up to him when he doesn’t have our best interest at heart.”
Corn and soybean associations commissioned a new study on the effects a potential trade war would have on agriculture producers. (Jared Strong | Iowa Capital Dispatch)
The National Corn Growers Association and the American Soybean Association found a tariff-induced trade war with China would “hurt” U.S. farmers, based on a jointly released study that pulled from 2018 tariffs data and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s economic plans.
Worse-case scenario figures in the study show that soybean exports to China would have an average decline of nearly 52% below baseline expected levels, and corn exports would have an average decline of 84% below baseline.
Agricultural representatives, including folks from Farmers Unions in Minnesota and Wisconsin, the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association and Iowa former Secretary of Agriculture and former Lt. Gov. Patty Judge among others, met Wednesday for a webinar in response to the study.
Many in the webinar urged farmers and rural voters not to vote for former President Trump because of his proposed tariffs.
“We know that elections have consequences, and unfortunately, this one could leave us in a very precarious position [for] those of us here in the heartland that try to make a living on the great soil,” Judge, a Democrat, said.
The study, released Oct. 15, was conducted by the World Agricultural Economic and Environmental Services and projected a new trade war would cause “immediate” drops in corn and soybean exports, which would quickly be filled by exports from Argentina and Brazil.
According to the trade study, many of the tariffs from the 2018 U.S.-China trade war are still in place, but China has granted annual waivers to the U.S. to reduce the tariff costs. This has worked to quell the trade war in recent years, but the study says the existing tariffs from China could “easily be reinstated.”
The study pulls from two scenarios, one where China fully reinstates the 2018 tariffs, and another where China applies a 60% tariff on U.S. goods, based on Trump’s proposal to place a 60% tariff on Chinese goods.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
This, according to the study, could lead to an average loss for U.S. soybean farmers of $3.6 billion to $5.9 billion and $0.9 billion to $1.4 billion for corn farmers in annual production value.
‘Still rebuilding’
The agricultural representatives on the Wednesday webinar spoke frequently of the 2018 trade war and the “devastating effects” it had on farmers and rural economies.
The effect was acknowledged by the former administration, which issued $23 million in relief to farmers who suffered a loss of trade because of the high tariffs.
Denny Wolff, the former Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture, said on the call that farmers were hit with a “double whammy” in 2018 when their imports went up because of the tariffs and the value of exports went down.
Gary Wertish, Minnesota Farmers Union president, said in the call that the agriculture economy is “still rebuilding” from the “devastating effects” of the 2018 trade war.
Judge said the tariffs could be “catastrophic” to Iowa because of its large agricultural production compared to its relatively small land mass and population.
“We saw what happened in 2018 and we simply cannot do it again,” Judge said.
According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Iowa is the second largest agricultural export state, and shipped $16.5 billion of domestic agricultural exports in 2022.
Brent Swart, the president of Iowa Soybean association, noted the importance of trade to Iowa soybean farmers in an emailed statement to Iowa Capital Dispatch.
“Many farmers could share a similar story of depressed commodity prices and sustained financial squeeze following the start of the U.S.-China trade dispute,” Swart said. “Trade remains a top priority for U.S. soybean farmers, and this study only underscores its importance.”
Most of the representatives on the call voiced support for Vice President Kamala Harris, or more aptly, for her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“Governor Walz clearly understands agriculture,” Judge said. “He is with us. He is our neighbor, and I have full confidence in a Harris-Walz administration to make solid decisions about agriculture.”
Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on Facebook and X.
President Joe Biden speaks Tuesday in Milwaukee, announcing a new rule requiring the replacement of all led pipes in the U.S. by 2037. (Screenshot | White House livestream)
All U.S. municipalities will be required to remove lead from their water lines over a 10-year period under new federal regulations the Environmental Protection Agency released Tuesday.
To officially announce the new rule, President Joe Biden traveled to Milwaukee, where he spoke about the role that his administration’s bipartisan infrastructure law played in advancing the replacement of lead pipes in Wisconsin’s largest city as well as across the country.
President Joe Biden speaks in Milwaukee Tuesday about the federally funded program to replace lead pipes nationwide. (Screenshot | White House livestream)
“For too long, local communities have known how important it was to deal with this problem,” Biden said. “It hadn’t been given the national priority it demanded, though. I’m here today to tell you that I’m finally insisting that it gets prioritized, and I’m insisting to get it done well.”
The U.S. has more than 9 million water service lines still using lead pipes, according to the EPA, including 340,000 lines in Wisconsin.
The infrastructure law includes $15 billion for lead pipe replacement. It also contains incentives to use union labor and to create apprenticeship programs to train more workers.
Underscoring that, Biden was introduced by Alonso Romo, a Laborers Union member who has been among the workers replacing lead lines in Milwaukee.
“I personally helped move 35 lead laterals, and while I have a lot more to do, I know we’re making great pace,” Romo said. “This is hard work, but it is so rewarding. Not only am I getting paid great wages and great benefits, but I know that when I am removing a lead service lateral, I’m helping a family in our community have access to clean drinking water.”
Nationally about 367,000 lead lines have been replaced — and in the process, Biden said, “providing what’s good for our health and for our environment is also good for our economy and it’s good for jobs.”
The rule released Tuesday is an update of the federal lead and copper rule for drinking water. The 10-year timeline it requires for all communities to replace their lead service lines starts in 2027.
“This is also about fairness,” Biden said. “Nationally, I’m directing nearly half of this funding to go to disadvantaged communities that have borne the brunt of lead pipe poisoning for damn too long.”
A disproportionate number of people living where lead pipes remain in use are people of color, Biden said. “We have an obligation to make things right.”
Advocates praised the measure as a boon to public health.
“As we confront the legacy of lead contamination, this rule strengthens accountability and prioritizes the safety of our most vulnerable communities,” said Sara Welling, director of the water and agriculture program at Clean Wisconsin. “Today’s announcement sets us on a course for a healthier future, empowering local governments and water utilities to address this persistent threat with greater urgency and transparency.”
This report has been updated to correct the spelling of Alonso Romo’s first name.
A farmer stores grain near Eldridge, Iowa, on Sept. 28, 2024. (Kathie Obradovich | Iowa Capital Dispatch)
WASHINGTON — Sweeping legislation that would set food and farm policy for the next five years is in limbo, waiting for lawmakers to decide its fate after the election.
The latest deadline for the farm bill passed unceremoniously at midnight on Sept. 30, without a push from lawmakers to pass a new farm bill or an extension.
Congress will have to scramble in the lame-duck session set to begin Nov. 12 to come up with some agreement on the farm bill before benefits run out at the end of the year — which if allowed to happen eventually would have major consequences.
The law began 90 years ago with various payments to support farmers but now has an impact far beyond the farm, with programs to create wildlife habitat, address climate change and provide the nation’s largest federal nutrition program.
Ag coalition in disarray
The omnibus farm bill is more than a year behind schedule, as the bipartisan congressional coalition that has advanced farm bills for the last half century has been teetering on the edge of collapse.
Congress must approve a new federal farm bill every five years. The previous farm bill from 2018 expired a year ago. With no agreement in sight at the time, lawmakers extended the law to Sept. 30, 2024.
The delay creates further uncertainty for farmers, who are facing declining prices for many crops and rising costs for fertilizer and other inputs.
Lawmakers have some buffer before Americans feel the consequences of the expiration.
Most of the key programs have funding through the end of the calendar year, but once a new crop year comes into place in January, they would revert to “permanent law,” sending crop supports back to policy from the 1938 and 1949 farm bills.
Those policies are inconsistent with modern farming practices and international trade agreements and could cost the federal government billions, according to a recent analysis from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.
‘Groundhog Day’ cited by Vilsack
The stalemate between Democrats and Republicans over the farm bill has centered on how to pay for it and whether to place limits on nutrition and climate programs.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters in a press call on Saturday that the process “feels like Groundhog Day” — because he keeps having the same conversations about it. Vilsack said Republicans “just don’t have the votes” on the floor for legislation passed in the House Agriculture Committee, which is why it has sat dormant in the House for four months.
“If they want to pass the farm bill they’ve got to get practical, and they either have to lower their expectations or raise resources. And if they’re going to raise resources, they have to do it in a way where they don’t lose votes, where they actually gain votes,” Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, said.
The Republican-led committee approved its farm bill proposal largely on party lines at the end of May, amidst complaints from Democrats that the process had not been as bipartisan as in years past.
Partisan division is not uncommon in today’s Congress but is notable on the farm bill, which historically brought together lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. Bipartisan support can be necessary for final passage because the size of the $1.5 trillion farm bill means it inevitably loses some votes from fiscal conservatives and others.
Shutdown threat
Lawmakers are on borrowed time with both the farm bill and the appropriations bills that fund the federal government.
The House and Senate both approved stopgap spending bills at the end of September to avoid a partial government shutdown. The short-term funding bill, sometimes referred to as a continuing resolution, or CR, will keep the federal government running through Dec. 20.
Some agriculture leaders had asked for the continuing resolution to not extend the farm bill, to help push the deadline for them to work on it when they return.
The day after they approved the CR and left the Capitol, 140 Republican House members sent a letter to congressional leadership asking to make the farm bill a priority in the waning weeks of 2024.
“Farmers and ranchers do not have the luxury of waiting until next Congress for the enactment of an effective farm bill,” the letter states, noting rising production costs and falling commodity prices that have put farmers in a tight spot.
House Democrats also say they want to pass a new farm bill this year.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, listed the farm bill as one of his top three priorities for the lame duck. Also on his list were appropriations and the National Defense Authorization Act, which sets policy for the Pentagon.
“It will be important to see if we can find a path forward and reauthorize the farm bill in order to make sure that we can meet the needs of farmers, meet the needs from a nutritional standpoint of everyday Americans and also continue the progress we have been able to make in terms of combating climate crisis,” Jeffries said in remarks to reporters Sept. 25.
Nearly 300 members of the National Farmers Union visited lawmakers in September to ask for passage of a new five-year farm bill before the end of 2024.
“Family farmers and ranchers can’t wait – they need the certainty of a new farm bill this year,” National Farmers Union President Rob Larew said in a statement after the meetings. “With net farm income projected at historic lows, growing concentration in the agriculture sector, high input costs and interest rates, and more frequent and devastating natural disasters, Congress can’t miss this opportunity to pass a five-year farm bill.”
Disagreements over SNAP formula
The key dispute for Democrats this year is a funding calculation that would place limits on the “Thrifty Food Plan” formula that calculates benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP.
It would keep SNAP payments at current levels but place a permanent freeze on the ability of future presidents to raise levels of food support. Democrats have characterized it as a sneaky cut to vital support for hungry Americans that makes the bill dead on arrival.
Republicans are using the limits as part of a funding calculation to offset other spending in the bill. The bill would raise price supports for some crops like cotton, peanuts and rice.
“They have to do one of two things,” Vilsack said of lawmakers. “They either have to recognize that they can’t afford all the things that they would like to be able to afford, if they want to stay within the resources that are in fact available … Or another alternative would be to find more money.”
Vilsack recommended finding other sources of funding outside the farm bill, like changes to the tax code.
“You close a loophole here or there in terms of the taxes or whatever, and you generate more revenue, and you have that revenue directly offset the increase in the farm bill. … That’s the correct way to do it. And that’s, frankly, the way Senator Stabenow is approaching the farm bill,” Vilsack said, referring to Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich).
The Senate Agriculture Committee has had no public markup or formal introduction of a bill. But leaders say committee staff have been meeting weekly to discuss a path forward. Stabenow has not publicly disclosed the offsets for the money she says is available to be moved into the bill.
Dockworkers demonstrate Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, at Maher Terminals in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Members of the International Longshoremen’s Association went on strike from Texas to Maine after the union failed to reach a new contract agreement with the United States Maritime Alliance over wages and automation. Tens of thousands of workers on strike could snarl supply chains, just a month ahead of the U.S. presidential election. (Photo by Mark J. Bonamo for New Jersey Monitor/States Newsroom)
ELIZABETH, N.J. — Tens of thousands of dockworkers went on strike from Texas to Maine on Tuesday to demand higher wages and a ban on all automation at ports in a move that could snarl supply chains only a month ahead of the presidential election.
The International Longshoremen’s Association union and the United States Maritime Alliance, which represents employers in the longshore industry, were unable to reach a new contract agreement. This is the union’s first strike since 1977, when dockworkers stopped work for several weeks.
More than 500 union members gathered at the gates of Maher Terminals in Elizabeth, New Jersey early Tuesday for the start of the strike. Harold Daggett, International President of the ILA, rallied the crowd as he spoke at one of the main container terminal operators at Port Newark–Elizabeth Marine Terminal, an important facility for goods entering the New York Metropolitan area.
“These greedy corporations, everything they got, they got from us. We’re the ones who worked through the pandemic to make them the money they got,” Daggett said in an interview.
When asked how long the strike would last, Daggett said that union members will stay on strike “until the end.”
On Monday, the ILA said employers were price-gouging customers by charging much more for containers, which would lead to higher prices for consumers. It stated that the wages offered by USMX were still too low to accept.
“The Ocean Carriers represented by USMX want to enjoy rich billion-dollar profits that they are making in 2024, while they offer ILA Longshore Workers an unacceptable wage package that we reject,” the union said in a statement. “ILA longshore workers deserve to be compensated for the important work they do keeping American commerce moving and growing.”
Scott Weiss, a member of ILA Local 1804-1, inspects containers that come off of ships entering at Port Newark–Elizabeth Marine Terminal, as well the chassis of the trucks that then carry the containers filled with goods away to destinations all along the East Coast.
Weiss said that the union is asking for wage increases that can cover the cost of inflation, and that a human eye is still needed to do his job right, even in the face of increasing automation.
“Employers push automation under the guise of safety, but it’s really about cutting labor costs to increase their already exceptionally high profits. Automation of our nation’s ports should be a concern for everyone,” he said. “The truth is robots do not pay taxes, and they do not spend money in their communities.”
The union said it will continue to handle military cargo and work passenger cruise ships.
Harold J. Daggett president of the International Longshoremen’s Association, speaks to striking dockworkers at Maher Terminals in Elizabeth on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. (Photo by Mark Bonamo for New Jersey Monitor)
Before the strike began, USMX said it offered a wage increase of nearly 50% and increasing employer contributions to employee retirement plans. USMX said their offer would still retain the same language on automation. The employers filed an unfair labor practice complaint on Wednesday with the National Labor Relations Board in which they accused the union of refusing to come to the bargaining table.
“In the last 24 hours, the USMX and ILA have traded counter offers related to wages. The USMX increased our offer and has also requested an extension of the current Master Contract, now that both sides have moved off their previous positions. We are hopeful that this could allow us to fully resume collective bargaining around the other outstanding issues – in an effort to reach an agreement,” USMX said in a statement Monday.
Voters remain laser-focused on the economy heading into the Nov. 5 election. Eighty-one percent of registered voters say the economy is very important to their vote for president this November, according to a poll published last month from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
Lauren Saidel-Baker, a speaker and economist at ITR Economics, a nonpartisan economic research and consulting firm based in New Hampshire, said that the longer the strike goes on, the greater the impact will be on inflation. Inflation cooled significantly enough for the Federal Reserve to cut the federal funds rate by half a percentage point last month.
“If this is just a week, again, there will be short-term disruptions and maybe things take a little bit longer to get where they’re going. That could be a risk for perishable items,” she said.
The supply chain issues that affected retail prices at the beginning of the pandemic may have prepared businesses for some disruption, she said, and this could mitigate some of the effects for consumers in the short term.
“We’re in a very unique situation where we just had this major, major supply chain disruption that caused a lot of American businesses to make contingency plans in a way that they just haven’t in the past. We have creativity and increased flexibility that will help us if this is just a brief disruption,” she said. “We still have elevated inventories in some sectors, so there might be a little bit more buffer in certain goods getting where they’re going.”
Aside from the economic effects on consumers, strikes can have spillover effects on other groups of workers. If dockworkers secure a strong contract as the result of this strike, it could affect other industries. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, associate professor of international and public Affairs at Columbia University, and former deputy assistant secretary for research and evaluation at the U.S. Department of Labor, said the success of auto worker strikes and the Hollywood strikes may have emboldened union dockworkers.
“I think you’re likely to see other industries, particularly those most closely aligned with, um, transportation and logistics, really pick up the baton on that, especially if the economic and political environment continues to be favorable to them,” Hertel-Fernandez said.
These greedy corporations, everything they got, they got from us.
– Union leader Harold Daggett
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has called on the Biden administration to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act, which allows presidents to intervene in strikes if it creates a national emergency. President Joe Biden has said that he does not plan to do so.
Biden’s position is unlikely to change, Hertel-Fernandez said, because of the politics of the timing.
“I think you would see a pretty negative response from the labor movement if they were to do so,” he said. “Given that it’s so close to the election, where labor is such an important constituent for the Democrats, that they would be unlikely to do it.”
___
Bonamo reported in Elizabeth for New Jersey Monitor, part of States Newsroom. Quinlan reported from Washington.
A youngster holds up a pro-union sign during a break between speeches at Labor Fest in Milwaukee Monday. Both presidential candidates are trying to appeal to union members. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)
Editors note:This five-day series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country.
7 States + 5 Issues That Will Swing the 2024 Election
Wisconsin carpenter Efrain Campos just retired this summer after 30 years, working mostly in commercial multi-story buildings — “from 15 floors and up,” he said. For him the last four years have been a boom period.
Efrain Campos (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)
On Labor Day, Campos, 68, was among the thousands of union members and their families who turned out for Laborfest on Milwaukee’s festival grounds on the shores of Lake Michigan.
He had planned to vote for President Joe Biden for a second term in office, but when the Democratic Party pivoted to Vice President Kamala Harris as its candidate, he pivoted as well. “We need somebody to help the middle people,” he said, “so they can advance, get a little bit better than what we are now.”
Campos dismisses the notion that the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, is a pro-worker candidate despite Trump’s populist appeal that grabbed a slice of the working class electorate in 2016.
“Not at all,” he said. “It’s ignorant. He’s a rich man, he gets his way. That’s not what this country is about.”
As the Nov. 5 presidential election nears, Democrats are counting on union workers to deliver voters, particularly in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada where unions have remained an influential bloc, even as their strength has declined over the decades.
Many labor union leaders say they’re working as hard as they ever have to oppose Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump and elect Vice President Kamala Harris. The AFL-CIO, a federation of 60 unions that range from Major League Baseball players to firefighters to workers in the food industry, has endorsed Harris.
A growing share of rank-and-file union members, however, have been less likely to follow their leadership — some of them among Trump’s base.
Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, speaks on on July 15, 2024, the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images)
“It has to be recognized that union members are not monolithic in terms of the party they support,” said Paul Clark, a professor of labor and employment relations at Penn State University. “Many unions have 30, 40, maybe 50% or more of their members who either are registered Republicans or are going to support Donald Trump in this election.”
Last week, International Brotherhood of Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien announced the union’s executive council would not endorse either ticket and cited the support of a majority of his members for Trump. (The Teamsters aren’t part of the AFL-CIO).
Other union leaders insist that O’Brien is an outlier.
Nick Webber, a business agent with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and a political organizer for the North American Building Trades Unions, said, “It’s unprecedented the amount of interest in people in getting involved” as he marshals union canvassers this fall for the Democratic national ticket. He said in his conversations he’s hearing union members say “not only, ‘am I going to be voting,’ and [that they’re] tuned in, but ‘how can I get involved’ and ‘doing my part.’”
Appeals to steel and culinary workers
When Biden dropped out July 21, the national executive council of the 12.5 million-member AFL-CIO endorsed Harris the next day “because we knew that the administration that has been fighting for working people for the last three and a half years, we know what they’ve delivered, and we knew that her record spoke for itself,” said Liz Shuler, national AFL-CIO president, in an interview with NC Newsline.
In an appeal to United Steelworkers, the most powerful union in western Pennsylvania, Trump said in January he would block a potential acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan-based Nippon Steel.
Nevertheless the union endorsed Biden, who said in a visit in April he also opposed the sale. Both he and Harris reiterated that stance during a Labor Day visit to Pittsburgh. “I couldn’t agree more with President Biden: U.S. Steel should remain in American hands,” Harris said.
In Nevada, Trump held a rally in June where he proposed ending federal taxes on tipped income — an appeal aimed at the workers in the state’s largest industry, hotel-casinos.
Harris adopted the no-tax-on-tips position as well in a visit in August, a day after the powerful Culinary Workers Local Union 226, endorsed her. The union reports that its 60,000 members are 55% women and 60% immigrants.
In a return visit in August, Trump suggested his “no tax on tips” position would draw Culinary members’ support — “A lot of them are voting for us, I can tell you that,” he said.
But the union responded by doubling down on its support for Harris, who on a visit months before had celebrated the union’s successful contract negotiations with the Las Vegas Strip’s largest gambling-resort corporations.
“Kamala Harris has promised to raise the minimum wage for all workers — including tipped workers — and eliminate tax on tips,” said Culinary Vice President Leain Vashon. Vashon said Trump didn’t help tipped workers while he was president, so “Why would we trust him? Kamala has a plan, Trump has a slogan.”
Making the case
For most union leaders, the case for Harris is the stark contrast they see between Trump’s record in the White House from 2016 to 2020 and that of his successor.
Kent Miller, Laborers Union Wisconsin District Council president and business manager (Laborers Union photo)
“When you talk about the politics of what’s at stake in this election, it’s very clear,” said Kent Miller, president and business manager for the Laborers Union Wisconsin District Council.
The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, the 2022 bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which passed with only Democratic votes, opened the sluices to fund a range of investments in roads and bridges, clean energy and electric vehicle infrastructure.
The programs include strong incentives for union labor and for the enrollment of new apprentices in training programs operated by unions and their employers.
“We’ve got record membership and apprenticeship [numbers] right now,” said Miller, crediting the legislation. “Just imagine what another four years of pro-labor, pro-worker investment could do for our union, our communities and for the state of Wisconsin and our economy.”
But the messages unions have been pushing about manufacturing growth, the infrastructure advances and jobs — even unemployment rates that have fallen to just over 4% nationally and 3% or lower in states such as Wisconsin — have been slow to resonate with voters who are focused on higher prices resulting from supply chain shortages.
“Part of that is the investment is still in the works,” said William Jones, a labor historian at the University of Minnesota. “It was slow to be distributed, and it depended largely on state and local government taking it up and creating jobs. It’s possible some people haven’t felt the full impact.”
Jones also suggests there may have been inadequate messaging from the administration — something that unions are trying to make up for in their member outreach.
Beyond what Miller and other union leaders see as those bread-and-butter accomplishments are other policy stakes in who holds the White House, such as the makeup of the National Labor Relations Board and who holds the post of general counsel, the principal architect of the agency’s legal perspective.
Those differences further underscore what most union leaders see as a sharp distinction between the two tickets. “We’ve seen both these movies before,” said Webber of the electrical workers union.
Under the Trump administration the NLRB veered to positions less favorable to unions, Miller observed. Under Biden, it has issued more decisions that have supported union positions.
How much does Trump appeal?
Can the former president succeed in once again carving out some support among union voters?
In Wisconsin, union members’ connections to the Democratic Party appear to have softened since 2016, a review of survey data from the Marquette University Law School poll suggests. While about 65% of union members told pollsters they were Democrats in 2012 through 2015, that dropped to 59% in 2016 and has fluctuated since.
Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, all previously reliable Democratic states with strong union political involvement, famously flipped to Trump by narrow margins in 2016, leading to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s defeat that year. All three flipped back to help carry Biden to victory against Trump in 2020.
Jones said Trump’s criticism of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2016 — enacted under Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1993 — “helped him among a certain demographic in 2016” — primarily working class white men from rural and small town regions.
When Teamsters President O’Brien announced the union wouldn’t make an endorsement this year, the union released a poll of rank-and-file members that found nearly 60% support for Trump compared to 31% for Harris. The union said the survey was conducted by Lake Research Partners, a Democratic polling firm.
O’Brien’s announcement followed his precedent-breaking speech to the Republican National Convention in July, where he called Trump “one tough SOB,” proclaimed a willingness to work with either political party and attacked business lobbies and corporations.
“I think he feels that at least half of his members are Trump supporters,” said Clark, the Penn State professor, in an interview before the non-endorsement announcement. “And while I think he recognizes that Biden has been very pro-labor, you know, politically, I think he felt a need to sort of send a message to his members that he hears them.”
The outcome opened up a rift in the union, however. Within hours of O’Brien’s announcement, local, state and regional Teamsters bodies representing at least 500,000 members of the 1.3 million-member union endorsed Harris, including groups in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada.
The pro-Harris Teamsters highlighted Biden’s role in signing legislation, included in the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, that shored up the union’s Central States Pension Fund. The fund faced insolvency by 2026 after years of underfunding.
Ken Stribling, retired Teamsters member and president of the National United Committee to Protect Pensions, speaks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (Screenshot | Democratic National Convention YouTube channel)
In August, Teamster retiree Ken Stribling of Milwaukee, president of a retiree group formed to campaign for the pension rescue, addressed the Democratic National Convention to thank Biden and Harris. Legislation had circulated during Trump’s term but the former president never took action to advance it, he said.
“The Biden administration and the vice president were really the ones instrumental in making sure that we got what we deserved,” Stribling said in an interview after his convention appearance.
In a statement, Bill Carroll, president of the union’s Council 39, representing about 15,000 Wisconsin Teamsters, said Harris would also build on Biden’s pro-union record. “In contrast, Donald Trump tried to gut workers’ rights as president by appointing union busters to the NLRB and advocating for national right-to-work,” Carroll said. “Trump’s project 2025 would go even further, attacking the ability for unions to even have the ability to organize.”
The labor-related provisions in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 document — billed as a blueprint for the next Republican White House — include proposals that experts have said would eliminate public sector unions nationwide, make forming private sector unions more difficult and allow states to opt out of federal labor laws. Other proposals would reduce federal protections for workers whether unionized or not.
Union messaging to members has emphasized the document and its ties to Trump, despite his repeated disavowal of the agenda and claims of ignorance about its contents.
“It is absolutely his plan,” the AFL-CIO’s Shuler told NC Newsline. “He’s had over 100 former administration officials and the Heritage Foundation basically writing the blueprint for his next term, which would eliminate unions as we know it.”
Reaching out to members
Union leaders say they’re trying to make sure their members are seeing the campaign the way they see it.
In Nevada, where the Culinary’s canvassing and get-out-the-vote effort is regarded as one of the state’s most formidable, the union boasts that during the 2022 campaign cycle it knocked on 1 million doors.
This year, UNITE HERE says it is once again mobilizing its members and plans to knock on more than 3 million doors in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and Michigan “to ensure that Kamala Harris wins the presidency.”
In Wisconsin, the Laborers are building political messaging into a union project to engage members more closely, “connecting union members with other union members,” Miller said, to explain how negotiations affect wages and health and retirement benefits, as well as the importance of increasing union representation.
“We’re a jobs club,” Miller said. The message to the union members, he adds, is that “at the end of the day it’s everybody’s right to decide who to vote for — but we want to let you guys know these are the issues at stake in this upcoming election.”
Experienced union members are holding one-on-one conversations, particularly with newer and younger members. “We’re not just doing phone calls, we’re doing job site visits, and member-to-member doing doors,” Miller said.
Webber’s work with the building trades group is similar. “We’ve been doing a lot of reaching out and making sure to have those conversations,” he said — on job sites and during union meetings.
The message: “These jobs don’t come out of thin air,” Webber says. “There’s been strategic, intentional investment for a need in the community.”
The communications don’t just focus on other union members, either, he said. “You need to be sure people on the periphery of the union hear [the message],” said Webber. “Union household members are a huge part of these conversations — a partner, a spouse or child.”
The Wisconsin law known as Act 10, enacted in 2011, has weakened the once-powerful The Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union. But Peggy Wirtz-Olsen, WEAC’s president, said the union remains active phone-banking weekly and with regular canvassing planned for October.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain speaks onstage during the first day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Aug. 19, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“We’re making the calls to ensure that our members are well educated on who’s on the ballot this go around and what they’ve done,” Wirtz-Olsen said.
Those calls focus both on the state races, where educators are hoping that a vastly different Legislature in 2025 could help unlock more funding for public schools, as well as on the national ticket.
“During the [presidential] debate we had a dozen house parties hosted by our members,” Wirtz-Olsen said. Along with Harris’ choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former teacher, as her running mate, the contrast between the Harris campaign’s support of public education and Trump’s vow to abolish the federal Department of Education “has them fired up and excited about this race.”
On Monday, the United Auto Workers union unveiled a national YouTube video aimed directly at members who might still see Trump through the lens of his attacks on NAFTA in his first presidential campaign.
The UAW has endorsed Harris. In the 3 1/2-minute video, UAW President Shawn Fain finds both Democrats and Republicans culpable for NAFTA and the factory closings over the quarter-century since it was enacted. In 2016, Fain says, “All of that pain had to go somewhere. And for a lot of working-class people, it went to voting for Donald Trump.”
The video, however, portrays Trump as a con man, highlighting his 2017 tax cut as favoring the wealthy and the USMCA, the trade law Trump enacted, as no better than NAFTA, which it replaced.
While emphasizing that “both parties have done harm to the working class,” Fain said that under Biden and Harris, “we’ve seen the tide starting to turn.”
Under Biden there’s been “more manufacturing investment in this country than at any point in my lifetime,” he says, and under Harris, “the Democratic Party is getting back to its roots.”
Paula Uhing (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)
Paula Uhing is president of the local Steelworkers union at a suburban Milwaukee factory. She’s another enthusiastic Harris supporter, but said she and other labor leaders “know that we still have a lot of work to do” to pull more union voters behind the vice president.
“We have so many union members that vote against their own interests,” Uhing said. “It’s just because they’re not paying attention, they’re not listening to the right people.”
She describes herself as “optimistically cautious,” though. One reason has been some of the conversations she’s had with coworkers.
“There are people at work who are not necessarily turning away from the Republican Party altogether, but they are considering the Democratic ticket,” Uhing said. “They’re looking at it in a completely different way than they did last cycle, which is a good thing.”
Kim Lyons, Pennsylvania Capital-Star; Hugh Jackson, Nevada Current; Rob Schofield, NC Newsline; and Andrew Roth, for Michigan Advance, contributed reporting for this story.
This story has been updated to correct the spelling of UAW President Shawn Fain.
In the Perspectives guest blog series, Farm Foundation invites participants from among the varied Farm Foundation programs to share their unique viewpoint on a topic relevant to a Farm Foundation focus area. Michelle Klieger is a 2024 Farm Foundation Young Agri-Food Leader and president of Stratagerm Consulting. In this blog she discusses the European Union’s new deforestation regulations.
The European Union aims to raise the global bar with new Deforestation Regulations. Effective since June of 2023, the regulations ban imported goods that stand to profit off of deforestation practices. By devaluing and even penalizing these practices, the EU hopes to create a commodity trade standard that will reverse the effects of deforestation. They predict 177,920 acres of forests, or one quarter of Rhode Island, will be saved in 2025, and are optimistic that these steps will reduce air pollution.
Soy, palm oil, beef, coffee, and cocoa trades are expected to experience a significant impact due to these new requirements. Brazil, Argentina, Malaysia, Indonesia, Canada and parts of Africa are on edge as they consider trading options. Some argue this is the beginning of a new era, while others see it as a reorganization of supply chains.
Michelle Klieger is the president of Stratagerm Consulting, a food and agricultural consulting firm. An economist and a business strategist, she works with the global seed industry, ag tech companies, conventional and non-conventional agriculture firms, and philanthropic foundations.
Complexities of EU Regulations
For companies working to meet regulations, the process is complex. While individual companies must produce data to receive deforestation- free certification, entire supply chains must be vetted. Each industry faces unique obstacles. Soy, for example, goes from farm production, and is then transported to processing facilities, then moved onto crushers, then to product manufacturers, and finally to retailers. If at any point in the process operations have made use of deforested land, the trading company could be banned from exporting goods to EU countries. Palm oil batches typically mix fruit from many sources at once. Many of these companies can only trace a product after it has been processed and would need to develop brand new traceability methods to meet requirements.
Meeting the new regulations requires an investment in technology and manpower. In order to make products fully traceable many companies are purchasing GPS technology that allows them to accurately map and consistently monitor their farms. Similarly, if products must be tracked and segregated from planting all the way to a grocery store shelf, digital tracking technology will also be needed. Guaranteeing deforestation-free methods must include in person inspections done by real people traveling from farm to farm to see operations up close.
It’s a time consuming process to build out this framework, but one that many companies deem both valuable to the global environment and financially lucrative in the long run. Decisions involve farmers, transportation companies, processing plants and manufacturers, but they also must include government policy, technology and in some cases legal crossroads. There is no overnight shift, but rather a development of practices.
A Supply Chain Split
Already many companies are rerouting supplies to other buyers and avoiding EU regulations altogether. The trend prompts speculation that the new requirements will not raise the bar, but simply split or change the flow of supply chains. Brazil could turn to China as a new soy buyer and Indonesia could potentially trade palm oil to Africa. We’ve seen substitute shifts like these in the past with the U.S.-China trade war and sanctions on Russian energy. It may prove simpler and more cost effective to change buyers rather than invest in meeting new EU regulations. Many of these companies have little ability to enforce downline or upline adherence to regulation and they fear penalties.
Interestingly, in 2020 Brazil produced ⅓ of the world’s soy, but only 13% of crops account for 95% of the deforestation that occurred that year. The other 87% appear to have been produced on grassland and savannah areas. The scenario is true elsewhere and begs the question; will this create a new environmental imbalance that puts stress on other ecosystems? Companies looking to meet regulations could potentially exploit approved farming areas by over farming them.
Demand For a Different Type of Supply
Will it be harder to secure buyers or much used commodities? For the EU, value is placed not just on the product, but how it is sourced. The decision will impact both consumers and European agriculture.
European countries are braced to experience a decreased supply of things like chocolate and coffee. But, exactly how increased operating costs will be absorbed remains uncertain. Typically consumer prices reflect production cost increases, but in this situation one or more points along a supply chain may need to take ownership of costs to ensure tradability. The result, at least in the initial stages, would be lower profit margins for most of these companies and possibly higher purchase prices for consumers.
Several European countries are seeking reduced regulations and maintain that the current requirements are virtually impossible for small and medium sized farms to accommodate. They also argue that these regulations negatively impact many of the current sustainability processes farmers are working to implement for the sake of biodiversity, crop and grazing rotations. Farmers worry that they will not be able to produce the soy meal needed to feed their own livestock and that the EU will become too reliant on exports which would negatively affect the European ag sector.
Good News For U.S. Producers
The EU is not alone. Other countries have similar environmentally focused goals and policy in the works to support these goals. The United States has seen a growing consumer demand for traceability, prompting many businesses to begin the process of leveraging technology and better communication up and down supply chains to help customers make informed decisions.
The Forest Act of 2023 was birthed out of the same desire to stabilize regions of the world that have suffered from illegal deforestation and offer opportunities for many industries and individual businesses to clean up their processes. If it goes into effect, the Forest Act would be very similar to the EU’s Deforestation Regulation; banning products that have been produced on illegally deforested land and penalizing unmet requirements.
Many American operations are positioned to receive deforestation-free certification. Several top soy producers are predicted to meet regulations and be granted access to the EU markets. A welcome relief to farmers who have faced narrowing markets in recent years.
Exactly how competitive this “new” market will be, only time will tell. Traceability efforts take time. Unless trade lines were already working toward deforestation-free goals, it will take years for many of these supply chains to implement methods that meet EU regulations. In the meantime, it’s highly likely that global trade negotiations will be impacted and supply chains will shift in response to the environmental standard.
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