Biden stays away from the Union’s sustained effort at the Alabama Amazon Warehouse

President Joe Biden considers himself a trade unionist “from the belt buckle to the sole of the shoe“As he likes to say. In his campaign discussions and policy proposals, Biden said he believes all American workers would be better off if more of them wore union cards. And some of the first actions he took in office supported unions and collective bargaining.

However, given that Amazon workers at a warehouse in Alabama have now voted for the highest union election in recent years, the White House has refrained from supporting unionization there. The relative silence of the administration did not go unnoticed at the Retail, Wholesale and Retail Store Union (RWDSU), which hopes to represent workers at the retail giant’s fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama.

“I think it’s important for the administration to demonstrate its support for unionization during this campaign,” RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum said in an interview with HuffPost. “This is the biggest campaign in many years and this is a great opportunity for the administration to show working people what is important to them.”

Amazon has no unionized warehouses in the US and would like to keep it that way. The company launched an aggressive counter-campaign to discourage the approximately 6,000 workers from joining RWDSU in a seven-week mail-in election. Amazon’s anti-union message is being followed by the workers themselves in the bathrooms, where the posters urge them to vote “no”.

Meetings of the retailer’s captive audience and anti-union literature have drawn criticism from Democrats in both the House and Senate, as well as some oblique criticism from the White House. Biden posted on Twitter in early February, the US government’s policy is to encourage collective bargaining and that employers should ensure that workers havea free and fair choice to join a union. ”

However, he did not call Amazon by name.

“This is his opportunity to put a stake in the field,” said Erica Iheme, a Birmingham native and Southern director for Jobs to Move America, a group working to improve the quality of jobs in Alabama. “He can say, ‘This is our administration.'”

Reuters reported Earlier this month, labor leaders sought support for White House officials’ efforts.

A tweet of support from the president may not influence any vote among workers. But it could alert a company like Amazon to potential retaliation and make a strong statement about the administration’s values. It would also set a new benchmark for a democratic president when it comes to public support for unions that often feel taken for granted in the Democratic Party.

The Barack Obama era also saw large union elections, but the former president remained characteristically above the struggle. Obama did not publicly support United Auto Workers’ failed effort to unionize a complete Volkswagen factory in Tennessee in 2014. This was the most careful choice in recent years, due to the fact that Volkswagen was a foreign automaker in the south.

HuffPost Readers: Are you working at the Amazon facility in Bessemer? We’d like to hear from you. Email our reporter here. You can remain anonymous if you wish.

There are understandable reasons why even a nice president should stay out of it. The support of a president may not help, and an administration may not want to be seen as putting a thumbs up. The National Labor Relations Committee, an independent agency to which the president makes appointments, oversees private sector union elections. The council may decide whether someone broke the law in the Amazon election, or even order a removal.

But Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a progressive group that emerged from the 2016 presidency of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Argued that Biden has a responsibility to directly condemn Amazon’s anti-union efforts. He said he would send an important symbolic statement, how Ronald Reagan’s dismissal of air traffic controllers meant “the open season of unions.”

“The truth is, this is bigger than Amazon,” Geevarghese said.

Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project’s executive oversight group, said the administration is facing a massive economic and public health crisis, but should still find time to censor Amazon’s anti-union tactics.

“A president who is committed to the labor movement can and should urge Amazon to give up undermining workers’ democracy,” Hauser said. Even if in the end this support failed to move the needle, he said, “the ties between the working people and the president would not be weakened, but really strengthened.”

Whatever concerns Biden might have about his inclusion in a union election did not stop some prominent Republican politicians before him. During the UAW campaign at Volkswagen, former Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) provided more work at the factory if the workers rejected the union. Tennessee then-Governor Bill Haslam also called on workers to give up the union, saying it would force the company to give up expansion plans.

Asked what prevents Biden from explicitly supporting the Amazon trade union impulse, a White House spokesman reiterated the president’s general position, saying it encourages trade union organization and collective bargaining and urges employers not to conduct anti-union campaigns. Biden called for increased sanctions on companies that illegally arrest unions, among other significant reforms of labor law.

Biden may have raised the expectations of progressives through his own pro-union actions so far as president. In an unprecedented move on Opening Day, Biden fired Peter Robb, Trump’s NRLB general counsel, whom the working groups vehemently considered anti-union. Instead of Robb, he nominated Jennifer Abruzzo, an American communications workers’ lawyer, to the praise of unions.

The anti-union tactics implemented by Amazon are quite common among American employers. Many trade union supporters would like to see more politicians discouraging and shaming these practices through the aggressors’ pulpit.

Earlier this month, a group of 13 Democratic senators, led by Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Cory Booker (NJ) called on Amazon to “abide by the law” and called on the company’s efforts to convince “shy. Fifty House Democrats, led by Rep. Andy Levin (Mich.), Sent a similar letter to the company.

RWDSU’s Appelbaum said he was pleased with the number of signatories in those letters, but acknowledged that it would be nice to have more names attached.

“I would tell anyone who is a Democrat who hasn’t logged in, they need to think about signing up now or reconsidering why they call themselves a Democrat,” he said.