Memo: Voters Support Biden Using Executive Action To Advance Workers’ Rights

By Ethan Winter Senior Analyst, Data for Progress

Introduction

With the power of presidency, Biden wields a potent tool to improve working conditions, promote the clean energy sector, and strengthen labor unions in this country. One of the strongest tools Biden holds is in the federal government’s role as a purchaser of goods and services, often referred to as “procurement.” This can function as a simple, yet effective instrument of industrial policy, allowing the administration to invest in American workers and build up domestic manufacturing and critical supply chains with high labor standards.

The other policy avenue available to the Biden administration comes in the form of revised use of existing federal labor law. This can materialize in a handful of ways. Biden has already taken the step of instructing the Department of Labor to reconsider how it treats workers who leave their jobs because of unsafe conditions due to the pandemic, potentially making them eligible for unemployment insurance. Biden can also work to ramp up enforcement on platform companies such as Uber and Instacart that incorrectly treat their employees as independent contractors. This can represent a means of reversing the damage of measures such as Proposition 22 in California.   

As part of a February, 2021 survey of 1,215 likely voters nationally, Data for Progress polled a range of steps that the Biden administration could through executive action regarding procurement, the misclassification of workers, and towards improving labor standards more generally. We find high levels of support for these proposals, even when tested using partisan frames and with explicit mention of the use of executive orders.   

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