Biden Puts Union Support at Center of Agenda

Mr. Biden has rarely missed a chance to highlight his interest in bolstering the U.S. labor movement, including through a slew of provisions in his legislative initiatives. He has toured a union training facility in Michigan and handed out sandwiches to union members in Delaware. When he signed the bipartisan infrastructure bill on the White House lawn, dozens of union members were on hand.

Behind the push: trying to win back rank-and-file union members, especially those in building and trade industries, who in recent years have gravitated toward the populist appeal of former Republican President

Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump reached out to unions, hosting White House meetings and pitching his own infrastructure plan.

Union support was key to Mr. Biden’s victory in several Rust Belt states in 2020, reversing some of the gains made by Mr. Trump, and those voters’ choices in 2022 will play a key role in the midterm elections.

Unions have spent tens of millions of dollars on campaign contributions in recent cycles, with the vast majority going to Democrats. Unions representing teachers, construction workers and government employees have been the biggest givers.

Just under 11% of the nation’s workforce is unionized, 2020 Labor Department data show, up slightly from 2019 but down from its recorded peak of about 20% in 1983, as manufacturing jobs waned and outsourcing grew. Yet public support for unions is at the highest point since 1965, according to a Gallup survey conducted in August. Employees have become more vocal about work environments and won higher pay. And both political parties have pushed to restore domestic manufacturing.

On Thursday,

Starbucks Corp.

baristas in Buffalo, N.Y., voted to form the first labor union at one of the coffee giant’s own U.S. cafes in its 50-year history. The White House, while not commenting specifically on that case, pointed to Mr. Biden’s support of workers’ right to organize if they so choose. On Friday, the president condemned a plan by cereal maker

Kellogg Co.

to permanently replace about 1,400 striking union workers, calling it an “existential attack on the union and its members’ jobs and livelihoods.”

Mr. Biden attracted attention earlier this year when he publicly backed a union drive by

Amazon.com Inc.

workers in Alabama, who will get a second chance to vote after a federal labor board cited violations in the company’s campaign earlier this year against organizing.

The spending plans at the heart of Mr. Biden’s agenda—and his party’s hopes of retaining its congressional majority—are packed with labor-backed provisions that include a measure aimed at helping unionized companies win billions of dollars in new green-energy projects, additional funding for home-care services provided by union workers and heightened fines for violations of workplace safety.

But Mr. Biden’s appeal to rank-and-file members is complicated by the broader liberal shift in the Democratic Party that carries an increased focus on racial and social policies, climate change and gun control, union members and leaders say.

“The whole party is fighting and is sort of lackluster,” said Scott Johnson, business manager of Local 210 of the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers in Erie, Pa. He supports Mr. Biden but figures half the union membership backs Mr. Trump.

Democrats in recent years have struggled to win the backing of white noncollege-educated voters, adding to concerns about holding the support of union members, particularly those in building trades.

“Among rank-and-file members, there’s not an overwhelming sense of ‘Biden’s great,’” said Joe Hughes, organizing director of an International Union of Painters and Allied Trade Chapter near Pittsburgh. Workers, he said, are more concerned about “the dark Covid cloud” and oppose vaccine mandates.

Mr. Hughes, who campaigned for Mr. Biden in a state that narrowly went for Mr. Trump in 2016 but flipped to the president in 2020, is optimistic that workers who are already netting bigger paychecks will come around. “I think deep down you are thinking, ‘This guy’s not bad for me.’”

A Wall Street Journal poll released this week showed Mr. Biden’s job rating in union households at 47% approve, 51% disapprove. Among voters overall, it was 41% approve, 57% disapprove.

Mr. Biden, who began his 2020 campaign at a Teamsters hall in Pennsylvania, has repeatedly sought to demonstrate support for unions. On his first day in office, he fired the general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board, Peter Robb, who came under criticism from labor groups for various actions, including a settlement with

McDonald’s Corp.

that helped shield the company from liability for the employment practices of its hundreds of U.S. franchisees. In April, Mr. Biden signed an executive order creating a task force to promote worker organizing.

Republicans say he is catering to special interests, singling out more liberal unions such as those representing teachers, and that he could harm businesses with new regulations and fines. The White House has also drawn criticism over electric-vehicle tax credits in the still-evolving healthcare, education and climate-change package that provide the full $12,500 tax write-off only for vehicles made by union workers using American-built batteries.

Tesla Inc.

and

Toyota Motor Corp.

, whose nonunion-made vehicles would qualify for $4,500 less, say Mr. Biden is prioritizing a political ally, the United Auto Workers, over the environment.

“This is all designed to put the finger on the scale in favor of labor,” said

Neil Bradley,

chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Unions play an important role in our economy, but we need economic policies that are fostering job creation and wage growth for all Americans, not just those that belong to a union.”

Opponents have launched a lobbying fight to change the legislation and are eyeing other pro-union provisions in the social-spending package, including one requiring contractors to pay prevailing wages to qualify for federal tax incentives on green-energy projects.

At many events to pitch his plans, Mr. Biden has been introduced by a worker, including Heather Kurtenbach, a 48-year-old ironworker from Washington state who spoke at the White House infrastructure bill signing last month. She recounted how after being released from prison in 2005 on drug-related charges she landed a union apprenticeship and climbed the ranks.

In an interview, she agreed some rank-and-file workers have moved away from Democrats, even though she said Mr. Trump’s policies hurt unions. “I really cannot understand it; all I can say is I know those people are so tired of the far left,” she said.

Mr. Trump harnessed that view in 2016 to pick up support among builders, electricians, plumbers, roofers and miners—longtime union members, and largely white men. He fared better among union members than any Republican presidential candidate since

Ronald Reagan,

according to exit polls. Mr. Biden, learning from the mistakes of 2016 Democratic nominee

Hillary Clinton,

focused more on workers in battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, flipping the states.

Overall, he earned 56% of the vote from union households vs. 42% for Mr. Trump, according to AP Votecast, a nationwide survey of voters. Separate exit polls from Edison Research found a similar split, 56% to 40%, which indicated Mr. Biden had improved on Mrs. Clinton’s eight-percentage-point advantage in 2016.

“A lot of times in the past there was a way of talking about blue-collar people without saying the word union, without touting collective bargaining,” said Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO. “Now, instead of saying ‘creating good jobs,’ we’re saying ‘creating good union jobs.’ That’s how you start to bring these people back with policies that make a difference in their lives.”

Said Ms. Kurtenbach, “If infrastructure doesn’t, I don’t know what will.”

Write to Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com