Wow. I’m actually stunned. I never expected to see the day when the US government would formally begin championing unions.

Bit of international context why I’m ambivalent about this. The Australian Liberal party loves unions too, and our version of “unions” were developed in part due to US meddling in the Australian executive branch (starting from Bob Hawke, who was a Labor PM and previously a “union” leader). I think the big junctures where the system was set up for failure were the industrial accords which exchanged real wages for benefits… which are now being rolled back. And then at various points, labour action and collective bargaining were also legally restricted.

The rhetoric is eerily similar too. The Liberals also love gassing up small businesses and high-income workers, while actually being the party of discrimination and wealth transfer. Labor is too but at least they like the liberal political theatre of pretending to care about social progress, and hence make things worse much more slowly and mostly just for marginalized people like disabled, trans, and First Nations people.

Nice to see Australia actually innovating in social justice backslides rather than just copying the US and UK’s homework I guess. Silver lining.