Remarks by CEA Chair Jared Bernstein at the Communications Workers of America Legislative-Political Conference

As Prepared for Delivery

I’d like to start by telling you about a few of my experiences over the years with President Biden, before he undertook his current role.

We first sat down and talked in December of 2008, when he was considering me for chief economist to the VP. He pulled a graph out of his pocket, one that I’d made with the economist Larry Mishel, showing the persistent and growing gap between overall economic growth and that of middle-class incomes. He pointed to the figure, saying if we’re going to work together, then closing this gap is going to be job number one. And unions are going to be part of the solution.

Let me show you a different picture that provides a strong visualization of what Joe Biden has always intuited about what unions do. The figure shows union membership as a share of the workforce plotted against the share of income going to the top 1%. Now, we all know that correlation isn’t causation, and there are a lot of factors that go into both of those trends. But there is definitely a relationship between the two lines in the figure.

Simply put, unions are a strong force against rising inequality, a strong force for fairness, and for that reason, a key component of Bidenomics. What do I mean by Bidenomics? Simple. It means that if you’re helping to bake the pie, you ought to get a fair slice. And unions help make that happen.

How do they do that?

–Unions raise wages for union and non-union workers. In general, estimates of the union wage premium range between 15-20%.

–Unions reduce wage inequality.  A 2019 study found that declining union density explains 40% of the growth in the top-middle male wage ratio.

–Unions raise benefits. Our Treasury Dept. produced an analysis showing that union workers are much more likely to have access to a wide range of benefits, such as child care, life insurance, medical benefits, and subsidized commuting.

–A 2020 study showed that unions raise benefits by 7-10% and successful union elections raise firm contributions to pension plans by 20%.

–Unions bargain for safer working conditions. Another 2020 study found that union elections raise the enforcement of workplace-safety laws.

–I guess that’s why union worksites are 19% less likely to have an OSHA violation than non-union worksites.

One of my first memories of those years shortly after we took office was VP Biden’s insistence that the Davis Bacon rules be embedded in the American Recovery Act to rescue the economy from the worst recession since the Great Depression. Shortly after that, we got to work on promoting Project Labor Agreements.

Fast forward to December of 2020, when we began to talk about what would become of the American Rescue Plan, yet again a task of rescuing the economy from an historic downturn. Again, Davis-Bacon, PLAs, and now the Butch Lewis Act pension protection were on the agenda, but so was the urgency of quickly getting back to full employment. In fact, in one of President Biden’s first economic speeches in February of 2021, he mentioned “full employment” 5 times.

Well, the President didn’t just talk the talk. He walked the walk. Over 15 million new jobs created since he took office with an unemployment rate at or below 4% for over 2.5 years. And talk about walking the walk—he was the first president to do so on the picket line!

Now, I doubt it surprised too many people in this room to see that this president has become far and away the most pro-union president in modern history. But again, it’s one thing—and no small thing, to be sure—to have your heart and head in the right place, by which I mean the labor place. It’s quite another to deliver the goods as consistently as Joe Biden has done in this space.

I think we can also agree that when the person in the oval office is as supportive of collective bargaining as this President is, and when he makes sure we have appointees to the NLRB that fairly implements labor law, a Competition Council that is constantly on the lookout for industry concentration yielding power imbalances, an Acting-Labor Sec’y who understands the role of unions like Julie Su, the atmosphere for organizing is a lot stronger than when those condition are not in place.

With this backdrop, let’s take this moment to relish some of the great organizing successes this union has recently seen. In February, CWA reached a historic tentative agreement with AT&T Mobility Southwest, affecting approximately 5,000 CWA members spanning Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas.

It’s an agreement that will provide a 5 percent raise for employees this year as well as a $1,000 signing bonus and wage increases for multilingual call center employees. Remote workers will now have increased benefits, a $55 monthly stipend, loss-of-pay protections, greater job security, and improvements to healthcare benefits, retirement benefits, scheduling, and leave.

In May, Workers for Prime Communications, which runs an AT&T Authorized Retail store in Montgomery, Ala., voted to form their union with the CWA, becoming the first location to join a union.

In March, approximately 600 workers at Activision Publishing, a video game maker owned by Microsoft, joined the CWA with hopes to negotiate higher pay and job security. CWA also reached a groundbreaking labor neutrality agreement with Microsoft this month, which will give employees at Activision Blizzard a seat at the table.

CWA-ZeniMax Workers United secured Juneteenth holiday for global workforce at Microsoft Video Game Studio in Maryland.

SEGA workers, another video game industry group with members of CWA, voted to ratify their first collective bargaining contract in March.

In one of my personal favorite CWA achievements, because it’s intimately related to the CHIPS Act that’s actively working to stand up US production of semiconductor foundries, CWA began talks for a labor peace agreement with Micron Technology Inc. that would cover the chipmaker’s $50 billion, two-factory investment in New York, a project that includes $6.1 billion in federal funding from the CHIPS Act.

In fact, when President Biden visited Syracuse in April, CWA’s District 1 VP pointed out that “Once again, President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Schumer have made it clear that they stand with working people and understand that the best way to rebuild our middle class and our upstate New York communities is through union representation and a voice on the job.”

In June, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation announced the approval of the CWA/ITU Negotiated Pension Plan’s application for special financial assistance.

It is neither by accident nor coincidence that CWA has been posting these W’s. This President will always try to embed and elevate workers’ voices in all of our legislation. That’s why you’ll note that he doesn’t just talk about how a policy will create jobs. He doesn’t even say “good jobs.” He talks about how that policy will create good UNION jobs.

After the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed, President Biden signed an Executive Order requiring that federal construction projects above $35 million use a project labor agreement.

BIL and IRA both include loans and grant funding for the conversion of existing auto manufacturing facilities to electric vehicles, allowing the Department of Energy to consider “job quality” as part of the application process. Projects are scored on strong workforce practices, including wages, benefits, worker safety, training, advancement, community hiring, and workers ability to join a union.

And just like back in 2009, the President has not forgotten the importance of prevailing wage standards, whichneed to be met for projects funded through BIL, CHIPS, and many IRA projects:

Projects funded or receiving federal financial assistance through BIL are subject to Davis-Bacon prevailing wage labor standards. The CHIPS and Science Act also requires that laborers and mechanics on CHIPS-funded projects receive locally prevailing wages, in accordance with the Davis-Bacon Act.

Speaking of fair pay, when we, as a nation, allow the threshold below which workers get time-and-a-half for overtime to erode, not only do we violate the spirit of the Fair Labor Standards Act—a bedrock principle of fair labor markets since 1938. We also erode the living standards of millions of working Americans, and that is NOT okay with this president.

That’s why our administration has updated Federal overtime regulations to ensure that they cover more workers, and to ensure that the threshold keeps pace as the economy grows. Four million workers who currently work overtime and aren’t currently eligible for overtime pay could benefit, either through higher earnings, or by more time at home with their families. The first set of updates are scheduled to take effect next week.

We’re proud of these actions on behalf of workers and unions in the here and now, but we also have to look around corners. That means taking a comprehensive approach to harnessing the power of AI to grow the economy while also protecting workers from its risks along with empowering workers’ voices in how AI plays out in the workforce. Should AI lead to increased productivity, as some economists believe it will, we also want to ensure that workers are receive their fair share of those potential gains, a goal we share with CWA’s Committee on AI.

That means significant involvement from the Department of Labor, whose Principles for Developers and Employers provide key guidance to employers on how they can adopt AI responsibly, without infringing on workers’ rights or privacy. It explicitly encourages firms and workers to collaborate to identify and develop AI solutions that benefit all.

Good practices in this space start at home, and OMB’s final guidance on government use of AI provides necessary guardrails to ensure that government adoption of AI protects both the Federal workforce and the American people.

CEA has conducted a detailed analysis of ways in which AI might impact workers and labor markets. It continues to study and inform the Administration on ways in which workers may be most vulnerable and what steps can be taken to help them.

But we know we can’t get to where we need to be without your help. That’s why we in the Biden/Harris Administration continue to consult with labor leaders, including those from unions like the Writers’ Guild and SAG-AFTRA that have negotiated protections from harmful uses of AI. These conversations facilitate important knowledge sharing about the new challenges that AI poses, and they inform the Administration’s own approach to AI adoption.

Of course, for many older workers, the future should mean a comfortable, dignified retirement, which is why we’ve worked with our friends in Congress to take unprecedented steps to ensure the safety and soundness of multiemployer pensions. Just last week, the President announced that thanks to the Butch Lewis Act from the American Rescue Plan, over one million multiemployer pensions have been protected from potentially-devastating cuts. Over 50,000 workers and retirees affiliated with CWA plans have been protected under this program. This includes $545 million for 24,000 CWA plan participants who saw their pensions restored just this month.

In fact, 83 different pension plans have been protected to date, covering over one million workers and retirees. On average, ARP funding has prevented cuts of 37 percent from occurring, costing workers hundreds of thousands of dollars over time. In many cases, ARP has been used to reverse cuts that had already begun to take effect.

That’s a lot of facts and figures, and I’m sure I have the economist’s disease of making simple things unnecessarily complicated. But as the President always reminds me when I stray too far from it, this is all basic common sense. When workers do well, the economy does well. And when unions do well, workers do well.

This is the simple, tried-and-true insight that has guided Joe Biden’s economics since he started out in politics, and he’s been committed to it ever since. Like I said, you’d be hard pressed to find a stronger advocate for workers, for workers’ voices being heard, for collective bargaining power and for unions.

Thank you.