Heading into Labor Day weekend, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz stopped at the International Association of Fire Fighters convention in Boston to make the case for the Democratic presidential ticket and its pro-union policies.
The Harris-Walz campaign has racked up several major union endorsements over the past month, building on the record of President Joe Biden, who calls himself the "most pro-union president in American history."
A former high school football coach, Walz connected himself to the group by introducing himself as a proud, card-carrying member of the Minnesota state teachers union. He then connected Vice President Kamala Harris’ California roots to the profession, saying, “she’s been to the memorials, knows the depth of sacrifice that you and your families go through.”
Saying firefighting was a matter of family for Harris, he highlighted her brother-in-law Andy Emhoff, who was a firefighter in Santa Cruz, Calif., as well as her history as California Attorney General, when she successfully sued the big banks for mismanaging the state’s pension fund and returned millions of dollars to firefighters and other public workers.
“As Vice President, she cast the deciding vote on the American Rescue Plan, which helped keep workers on the job,” Walz said. “It kept the public safe during the pandemic, and it let local fire departments hire, train and retrain more of the firefighters that we needed.”
Walz contrasted that record with former President Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, saying the only thing they know about working people is how to take advantage of them. He said Trump blocked overtime benefits and opposed efforts to raise minimum wage while president.
“Every single chance they’ve gotten, they’ve waged a war on workers and the ability to collectively bargain,” Walz said, adding that Trump and Vance support right-to-work laws that promote workers’ rights not to join a union.
He pointed to Project 2025 as a blueprint “to screw the middle class, making it harder for workers to collectively bargain, allowing employers to drastically cut overtime or eliminate it and slash taxes for the ultra-wealthy by imposing a national sales tax on the rest of us.” (Trump has sought to disavow himself from Project 2025, which was created by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, though several of his former administration officials have contributed to it.)
Presenting himself as an everyman who served in the military and coached sports, he cast the Harris-Walz ticket as the party of the people and the middle class. If elected, he said Harris will sign the Protecting the Right to Organize, or PRO, Act, allowing workers to organize, form unions and collectively bargain for better wages and benefits.
“As a union members,” Walz said, “our union halls are the purest form of democracy. The opportunity to speak your mind, elect leadership, speak what you want on your platform and then go advocate for it. That’s how democracy is supposed to work.”