Unpacking JD Vance's Labor Record

[Omaha Steve]

https://onlabor.org/unpacking-jd-vances-labor-record/

Former President Donald Trump announced Senator JD Vance as his Vice Presidential running mate last Monday via a post on Truth Social. Vance, currently the junior senator from Ohio, has frequently portrayed himself as a pro-worker, conservative populist. Indeed, Vance’s confirmation as the Republican nominee for Vice President occurred at the same Convention where Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke to the assembled Republican Party delegates and officials. Many have cited the two events as evidence of the party’s attempt to court union votes and paint itself as a “pro-worker” party.

Vance claims that he is a different kind of Republican. But behind this pro-worker gloss, his track record on workers’ rights seems to be more of the same. Vance’s history on workers’ issues is politically savvy but rarely substantive. Instead, Vance displays a repeated practice of claiming to support workers and their right to organize while practicing business-as-usual anti-union and anti-worker politics.

Vance’s Contradictory Record

While some of Vance’s views depart from Republican orthodoxy—for example, he has stated an opposition to right-to-work laws—those views are often contradicted by other positions. His engagement around the UAW strike, for instance, was tinted heavily by his climate denialism as he railed against the shift to electric vehicle production. His claimed opposition to right-to-work laws is also contradicted by his opposition to the PRO Act, which would ban such laws. And his support for unions is contingent upon the political support of their leadership.

Nonetheless, Vance frequently claims the authority of the working class to push back against what he sees as a “culture war”, calling out “woke capital” and referring to DEI initiatives as class warfare. Meanwhile, his voting record on worker’s rights issues has been spotty at best, and the labor law reforms he has sponsored have been criticized as tilting the playing field even further in favor of employers.

FULL story at link above.