Vaccine Mandate Backlash Threatens Democrats' Alliance With Labor Unions

For nearly a century, the marriage between labor unions and Democrats has been one of the most enduring political relationships in America — but a backlash to COVID-19 vaccine mandates encouraged or enacted by President Joe Biden is threatening the foundation of that alliance and exacerbating cracks in the partnership that have been forming for the last few years.

Organized labor has been tied to the Democratic Party since the 1930s and former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s "New Deal" initiatives, labor non-profit Strike Wave notes. But even before the fraught days of the pandemic and the current mandate uproar, rank and file union members had been showing increased independence from their leadership. Politico reported in 2020 that an officer of the Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council told them that, despite his best efforts to convince his members to vote for Biden, he was not able "to move the needle."