I really think that the Dems are missing an opportunity by limiting their speaking about unions to election time. Unions are one of the best conduits for the Dems to help the working class, and similarly, to understand their problems and sentiments. The GOP are allergic to unions, and just about everyone is fine with unions getting them better wages and benefits.
The only press that unions have gotten in my lifetime is when they go on strike. I was well into my 20's and had been working for a decade when I first figured out what a union did that was at all POSITIVE. All I knew was the UAW was striking again and GM wasn't making/selling any cars for some reason. I expect people today have even less understanding of the purpose of a union, unless their parents were die-hard unionists.
Yeah but nearly no one is in a union anymore and the interactions people have with unions are overwhelmingly negative. If there's a union, it's likely to be civil and it's likely to be the reason they can't do the budget cuts that would give their kid a free lunch or a new library or computers in the classroom or a new traffic light or get rid of the traffic light cameras or or or.
Or their union sucks. My wife's union before she went into management had let health care fees go up faster than raises for almost a decade, all while raises were often less than the rate of inflation. The guy they would send to do negotiations had no idea of what he was doing. Things would sneak into the contract that were against the interest of employees which only a lawyer would understand. Grievance would see little follow through. My wife's branch of the Teamsters had a lot of soft corruption. The union collectes dues, union representatives collect paychecks and the workers got little from it. The only reason her shop is unionized is because Democrats generally won't buy printing from a non union shop, so the company let's one in ten shops be union shops as long as they don't demand much at negotiating time. If the union gets uppity they close the shop down. The solution would be to unionize the across the whole network of print shops but I guess the Teamsters don't organize anymore. It's a fucking mess. Why would the average employee be pro union if this is what it gets them?
Imagine this thing goes away over the summer and then comes back with a vengeance in September/October the way Spanish Influenza did in 1918. Every Republican stronghold has a choice: (1) roll out an ad-hoc absentee ballot system, which heavily favors democrats and liberals (2) accept that people over 60 aren't going to come out and vote, which heavily favors democrats and liberals. I mean, you go (2) you lose this election. You go (1) and you lose all future elections.