Kamala Harris: A Champion for Working People

Kamala Harris

 

The Biden-Harris Administration promised to be pro-worker and pro-union and it has fulfilled that promise. Vice President Harris has played a major role in making this happen:
 

  • Vice President Harris serves as the Chair of the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment. In doing so, she has helped advance dozens of policies to make it easier for workers to organize, to raise wages, and to strengthen workers’ bargaining power.
     
  • In the Vice President’s role as the president of the United States Senate, Harris has cast tiebreaking votes to confirm CWA’s former counsel Jennifer Abruzzo to serve as General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, to pass the Inflation Reduction Act to create green manufacturing jobs and to lower our prescription drug costs, and to pass the American Rescue Plan to save our pensions and to dig the economy out of the recession that she and President Biden inherited.
     
  • In 2023, Harris cancelled an appearance at an event to avoid crossing a picket line, and changed her hotel reservations for another event to avoid crossing a picket line held by the hotel’s workers.
     
  • Vice President Harris has personally met a number of times with CWA leaders and CWA rank-and-file members to hear our concerns and make sure that the White House’s agenda supports our needs.
 
Vice President Kamala Harris meets with New Flyer workers.

Vice President Kamala Harris visited CWA members and toured New Flyer’s electric bus manufacturing plant in St. Cloud, Minn.

Photo by Stephen Maturen/AFP via Getty Images. Unlicensed use prohibited.

 

Before serving as Vice President, Harris served as United States Senator from California. In that role, she was one of the biggest champions for workers and unions in the Senate:
 

  • Harris was of the lead original co-sponsors of and a champion for both the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act.
     
  • Harris was the lead sponsor of legislation to strengthen Occupational Safety and Health Act protections against heat stress on the job. She was also the lead sponsor of legislation to establish a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights to provide domestic workers with basic protections and rights on the job, as well as legislation to strengthen whistleblower protections on the job.

Harris also served previously as Attorney General for the state of California. She was likewise a major champion for workers there:
 

  • Harris established a landmark cooperative task force with the U.S. Department of Labor to increase investigations of and enforcement against wage theft.
     
  • Harris secured hundreds of millions for the state’s teacher and public employee pension funds to make them whole after big banks misrepresented the value of their investments.
     
  • Harris secured $18 billion for California homeowners from banks who abused homeowners during the foreclosure crisis.
     
  • Harris won over $230 million from pharmaceutical companies who were misleading patients.

 

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