V.P. Kamala Harris is the Only Candidate in this Race Fighting for Working Latinos

Julie Chávez Rodríguez

Posted Sept. 5, 2024

Unions have historically been key in electing Democrats across the Blue Wall states, but they are also just as critical in the Sun Belt—and our campaign is actively working with unions in both regions including the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165 to make sure we elect Vice President Harris and Governor Walz this November.

The fact is that Vice President Harris and Governor Walz are no strangers to organized labor.

Since announcing her candidacy, there’s been an enormous groundswell of support from labor unions and Latino leaders for electing Vice President Kamala Harris as President. Educators, health care professionals, farmworkers, construction workers, civil rights leaders like Dolores Huerta, and more join a growing list of dozens of unions—nearly all of organized labor—standing with the Vice President. They stand with Vice President Harris and Governor Walz because of their lifelong commitment to fighting for workers’ rights, Latinos and creating millions of good-paying union jobs.

Throughout her career in public service, Vice President Harris has had labor’s back, and this November, labor will have hers. There are 2.7 million union members in the battleground states. That means something when roughly 45,000 votes in key states decided the election four years ago.

Vice President Harris has fought for Latinos, labor and workers’ rights her entire career.

As California Attorney General, she made taking on wage theft a priority. In 2015, she signed an order to crack down on employer wage theft and other illegal labor practices. This followed her success in negotiating a settlement with JPMorgan to win nearly $300 million for retirement programs for teachers and public employees. In the Senate, Harris led the fight on the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act to grant domestic workers federal labor law protections for the first time and guarantee a minimum wage, overtime pay, meal breaks, and protections against harassment and discrimination. In 2019, she walked two picket lines with striking UAW and McDonald’s workers in Nevada.

In the Senate and then as Vice President, she fought for OSHA to develop an enforceable standard to protect outdoor and indoor workers from the health harms of extreme heat, including farm workers and construction workers. As Vice President, she cast the deciding vote to pass the Butch Lewis Act, after backing the bill while Senator, ensuring millions of retired union workers would still receive their pensions. She also led the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment—which oversaw agencies’ efforts to remove barriers to worker organizing and create good-paying union jobs as well as championed legislation to provide overtime to millions of workers and establish prevailing wage protections for many of the jobs being created under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Kamala Harris has always understood that labor rights are also civil rights. She has been a vocal advocate for comprehensive immigration reform, securing our border, keeping families together, and creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who have earned it, because she understands that immigrants are integral to our economy and yet live in fear of deportation.

Union workers across the battleground states are mobilizing to elect Kamala Harris. Nationally, Kamala Harris is already leading Trump in receiving the backing of national union leaders and making gains with Latinos. She also leads Trump with union support in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and, critically, in Pennsylvania where Trump won union voters by 2 points in 2020. Harris has also significantly grown the campaign’s lead in Michigan—her support among union voters in the state is three times larger than it was in June. This support for Vice President Harris among union and Latino households is building on the gains the Biden-Harris ticket made with union households in 2020.

The unions endorsing Kamala Harris have already committed to spending hundreds of millions of dollars on bilingual voter registration, education and mobilization programs. In 2022, the AFL-CIO organized more than 100,000 volunteers to reach at least 7.7 million working people—and as they made clear at the time, that was just the beginning of the infrastructure they planned to deploy in 2024. Union workers and organizers—no strangers to rallying around causes and making political change—will be out knocking doors, canvassing, and rallying communities behind Vice President Harris and Governor Walz.

While Kamala Harris promises to continue the pro-worker agenda of the Biden-Harris administration, Donald Trump and JD Vance’s Project 2025 threatens to rip away all of that progress. While in office, Trump rolled back protections for workers’ pay and safety, lost more than 170,000 manufacturing jobs, and eviscerated 839,000 energy workers jobs—a 10% drop. During his presidency, major plants closed across the battleground states and the country, including a GM plant in Warren, Michigan, and several steel plants in Pennsylvania. And, the Trump-Vance record of undermining and attacking unions is unpopular.

Bottom Line: The Trump-Vance record of attacking and undermining Latinos and unions at every turn is toxic to working Latino families. Vice President Harris and Governor Walz have spent their entire career delivering for unions and American workers, and now the nation’s leading unions and Latino union leaders like United Farm Workers (UFW) Teresa Romero are putting the full strength of their organizing prowess to send them to the White House and defeat Trump’s anti-worker agenda.

Julie Chávez Rodríguez is the Harris-Walz Campaign Manager.