Christopher Benz

Because Kamala Harris and Tim Walz support unions

I remember when I was about fifteen, and my dad was driving me to school some dark and icy morning, and I repeated an idiot comment from a morning radio DJ about unions. My dad turned down the music. “I’ve worked union jobs, and I’ve worked nonunion jobs,” he said. “My life got a lot better when I joined a union.”

When I was young, my dad was a nonunion welder at a metal fabrication shop in Anchorage. He collected books on chess strategy so that he could play games on his short lunch break. In one of my earliest memories, I played chess in the care of one of his coworkers while my dad finished up some overtime. Construction jobs ran long hours in the summer, but when the salmon were running, he still found time to take me to Ship Creek, carrying our fishing rods along the train tracks, down to a river that seemed like a maze of trees and swirling silt.

The savings and loan crisis, timed perfectly with low oil prices, hit Alaska’s economy hard. My dad lost his job, like a lot of Alaskans. Reagan’s deregulation and pro-corporate judges had enabled a new form of business: leveraged buyouts with private equity. While corporate raiders dismantled the American economy, broke unions, and outsourced every job they could, people like my dad were trying to figure out how to pay the rent. My mom begged for a job at the National Bank of Alaska, where she had been ghostwriting the CEO’s statements to shareholders. My dad quit construction and went back to school to become a teacher. We were fortunate, and are fortunate—far more than I realized at the time. 

My dad’s new teacher’s union went on strike. I was still a little kid when I joined him on the picket line. Fall in Anchorage had brought dark afternoons and Canada geese. I remember hot cider, and all these tall teachers stooping down to greet me. My dad and I marched and chanted, and I saw the energy in fighting for community. 

I take comfort knowing that the health care and pension from that union job are keeping my dad safe now in his retirement. I know his job gave us security while my mom worked her way up the ladder to become an executive at the bank. And I know that a generation later, we now need unions even more. The great gap between management and labor has widened. The wealthiest 10 percent of American families hold 75 percent of America’s wealth. Corporate behemoths are increasingly ready to screw over employees in new and technologically innovative ways. The cost of housing has increased. At my last union job, as a hotshot for the Forest Service, almost half of the temps on my crew just lived in their cars.

When Joe Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act, he included an extra bonus for wildland firefighters. It’s far, far less than firefighters need to keep up with the job’s changing nature and post-pandemic rents in gentrifying mountain towns. It certainly isn’t enough to earn every firefighter’s trust, or even all of mine. But at least someone was finally fighting for us.

I’m voting for Kamala Harris because I know Harris and Tim Walz will support unions. Walz was even in the same union as my dad. If Harris continues Biden’s antitrust policies, she will help prevent the kind of private equity looting that has hurt working Americans, exacerbated our wealth gap, and weakened our manufacturing power. I’m voting for Harris because I believe unions are the best chance to give Americans the kind of dignity we have lost to corporate monopolies. 

Harris hasn’t proved herself on this front yet. But Joe Biden has. So I’m trusting Joe, who trusts Kamala, and I hope—I believe—that that trust will be well placed. 

Chris Benz is a writer.