Harris campaign failed to connect with working class, US union federation says

Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign failed to connect with low-income workers across the US because it resorted to “telling people versus listening”, according to a senior union leader.

Liz Shuler, president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), said the Democrat’s bid for the White House did not resonate with working-class people who remain “very much economically insecure”.

In an interview with the Guardian, she described a “disconnect” between the day-to-day experiences of those struggling to make ends meet, and efforts by the Harris campaign to highlight a “set of accomplishments and track record” under Joe Biden’s administration.

“When you’re struggling to put food on the table, and you’re still dealing with inflation … the messaging that Trump was saying was effective,” Shuler said. Donald Trump’s campaign framed the election around whether voters were better four years ago – before he left office – than they are now, she noted. “And a lot of people answered that question: ‘yes.’”

The AFL-CIO is the largest federation of labor unions in the US comprising of 60 national and international unions representing over 12.5 million members.

Harris had an almost 17-point lead among union members, according to the AFL-CIO. But outside of labor unions, low-income voters disproportionately voted for Trump.

“We’re meeting and discussing within our own ranks about how we can actually translate the messaging that we were able to galvanize our members around,” said Shuler, “which did resonate since we turned out at higher numbers than the general public for Harris”.

The majority of US labor unions and the AFL-CIO endorsed Harris over Trump, and several labor unions and groups engaged in vast door knocking and get-out-the-vote efforts ahead of the election. A handful, including the Teamsters, declined to endorse a candidate.

Over the past four years Biden has delivered massive investments in infrastructure and chip technology, and a federal labor department that supported workers and policies backed by labor unions. Now the wider labor movement is bracing for Trump’s return.

“It’s definitely a sucker punch, but we pivot very quickly into the fight ahead,” Shuler continued. “The labor movement is evergreen. It’s endured through presidents, every four years, for over 100 years, and we’ve been there, done that. We are an institution that will continue to exist and fight forward no matter who’s in the Oval Office.”

The environment under Trump “won’t be positive”, she added. “But it doesn’t mean that we don’t continue to organize, and continue to fight back. It’s what we do.”

Citing a recent meeting of the AFL-CIO’s executive council of 60 labor union leaders, Shuler emphasized the importance of solidarity across the movement to ensure individual unions and worker groups aren’t left fending off rollbacks and attacks on their own.

According to a September survey by Gallup, 70% of the American public approve of labor unions – nearly a 60-year high. This support appears even stronger among younger people, with 88%of Americans under the age of 30 viewing unions favorably, according to an AFL-CIO poll last year.

Shuler is bracing for a battle that is “both defensive and offensive” during the second Trump presidency.

“Every single issue that we see coming out of this administration, where there’s a rollback or a regulatory attack, we are going to be the fighting force that not only pushes back in terms of the fightback in Congress and the policy angles, but on the ground, because this is going to have to be a mobilization fighting force that is on sort of rapid response,” she said. “While we’re on that defensive posture, we’re also going to be on offense, in the sense that organizing and growth have been our number one priority. That is not going to stop.

“No matter what happens in Washington DC, we’re still going to have that power of collective action in the workplace.”