SMART Convention delegates vote to endorse Vice President Harris for president

On Monday, August 12, delegates to the 3rd SMART General Convention voted to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president in the 2024 election, following President Joe Biden’s July 21 announcement that he would end his reelection campaign. Convention delegates are the elected representatives of SMART’s 230,000 members.

SMART released the following response thanking President Biden and committing to electing Vice President Harris and her running mate, Minn. Governor Tim Walz:

“Four years ago, SMART members across our nation mobilized — in the midst of a rampaging global pandemic — to send Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House. Coming off four years of anti-worker policy from the Trump administration, we marched to the polls and elected President Biden and Vice President Harris based on their track record of fighting for union workers and their promise to prioritize infrastructure funding, union jobs, two-person railroad crews and more.

“In an age of political cynicism and broken promises, the Biden-Harris administration bucked the trend and kept their word to SMART members.

“There hasn’t been a more pro-union president in recent memory – maybe ever. Right off the bat, the Biden-Harris White House fired the anti-labor general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, delivering pro-union appointees who have helped facilitate a surge in worker organizing across the U.S.

“Under President Biden, Congress passed the most transformative pro-worker laws our nation has seen since the 1960s. The American Rescue Plan saved more than one million union pension funds, including those of 1,600 sheet metal workers in Ohio. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invested in public transit and high-speed rail lines, creating jobs for SMART sheet metal and Transportation Division members — simultaneously sending money flowing into manufacturing plants where our production members make their living. The CHIPS and Science Act has sparked a megaproject surge that has put thousands of SMART members on the job. The Inflation Reduction Act ensures that our nation’s transition to a green economy is built and transported by union workers.

“And this spring, four years after he directly promised to do so in a video message to our members, President Biden’s Federal Railroad Administration finalized a regulation requiring two-person crews on freight trains in the U.S.

“The Biden-Harris administration enacted domestic policies to create an economy for the many, not the few. President Biden signed laws that directly benefited our members, from retirees to apprentices, in a way that we’ve never seen. Perhaps most importantly, President Biden and Vice President Harris rejected the idea that a pro-worker political agenda is ‘unrealistic’ or detrimental to our nation: On the back of historic investments in working-class Americans, our economy is thriving.

“Now, it’s time to finish the job.

“Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Governor Walz, have been committed friends to the labor movement at large, and SMART members in particular – a frequent presence at training centers and union halls in Philadelphia, Boston, Minnesota and beyond. Throughout Harris’s term as vice president, she has been laser-focused on pursuing the Biden-Harris agenda, enacting and implementing laws that prioritize the interests of union members and workers, and she chaired the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing — a first-of-its-kind effort to empower workers through federal reporting, recommendations and action.

“Walz, meanwhile, has signed a laundry list of pro-labor laws as governor, including a state two-person crew law, a bill to put sheet metal workers on jobs improving ventilation in public schools, a law banning anti-union captive audience meetings and many more.

“Faced with the existential, anti-worker threat of another Trump presidential term, all of us at SMART know that the Harris-Walz ticket is the right choice for working families.

“SMART thanks President Biden for his principled commitment to our members. And we commit wholeheartedly to sending Vice President Harris back to the White House this November.”