On July 31, members from unions all across the labor spectrum came together to show their support of Vice President Kamala Harris.
On a Zoom call with an estimated 8,000 participants, IBEW members played a big role in the lineup of speakers, including host AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, who is also a member of Oregon IBEW Local 125.
Shuler said the goal of the call was to channel the widespread enthusiasm for VP Harris into a volunteer mobilization team for Harris’s campaign for president.
“No one else in the country represents such a diverse movement,” said Shuler. “When labor comes together unified, we have incredible power. Now we have 96 days to literally change the course of history.”
IBEW International President Kenny Cooper said Kamala Harris had worked alongside President Biden on every pro-labor policy and regulation their administration passed. She also visited IBEW training centers and headed a task force on strengthening unions.
“She has been the tie-breaking vote on so many labor issues. Not just rescuing pensions, but the Inflation Reduction Act and pro-labor appointees to the NLRB,” said Cooper. “Kamala Harris understands how vital unions are to both the economy and working families. She understands it’s not a choice between the two.”
Philadelphia Local 98 member Teila Allmond, a training instructor and recruiter for the pre-apprenticeship program Rosie’s Girls, said Harris has been impressive in her whirlwind transition from VP to presidential candidate.
“I have watched Vice President Kamala Harris stand strong in the middle of a movement-in-the-making with grace, resolve and joy,” said Allmond. “Kamala Harris is a role model to me. She is half of the historic team that has been the greatest champions of workers ever in the White House.”
Also discussed was Donald Trump’s agenda. Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump administration, making it harder and in some cases illegal for workers to join a union, calls for the repeal of union construction workers’ wage rates, and eliminate the Biden-Harris administration’s executive order on PLAs that has brought so much work to IBEW core industries. And that is just the tip of the extreme anti-labor policy iceberg that is Project 2025.
