This Labor Day Americans may be thinking about how to figure out where the leading party candidates stand on workers’ rights. Comparing the recent political conventions may be a good place to start.  Political party conventions always are one part theater, one part pep rally and one part policy agenda setting.  Sometimes it can be hard to tell what fits into the theater part of the experience and what is genuine agenda-setting.  Much was written after the Republican National Convention about what Donald Trump’s convention said about his interest in the labor movement – did the Convention with a primetime speech by a labor leader signal a change? This question should be abundantly easy to answer when voters compare the Republican Convention to the recent Democratic Convention. 

The Republicans treated labor strictly as theater. I have confidence that American workers are not going to fall for the Republican pro-labor cosplay that Donald Trump, his running mate Sen. JD Vance and others in their party put on the stage at the RNC. Trump and Vance are confused about how cosplay works. When adults dress up to pretend to be something they’re not, everyone else is in on the joke.  Trump and Vance seem to think, however, that American workers aren’t going to notice their costumes and will go along with being the butt of the Republicans’ joke.

Republicans’ pro-labor rhetoric could hardly be more obviously fake. Let’s start with Donald Trump’s record. We don’t need to guess about whether he would push for pro-worker policies if he was in charge of the government again. We know the answer — no. When he was president he used the power of his Administration to take overtime protections away from hard-working Americans, make it harder for workers to join unions and allow the financial services industry to cheat savers out of a secure retirement. No amount of smiling at a labor leader at the RNC could make that record anything but scary for working people.

Nothing that happened at the RNC or at any other point in Trump’s campaign gives us reason to believe that a second Trump term would be any different. Project 2025, the governing agenda drafted by Trump’s close advisors, is a veritable workers’ nightmare: more regulation of unions and less regulation of employers, rollback of child labor protections and a decimation of the civil service workforce.  And the one significant labor law reform that Project 2025 calls for – allowing for company unions.

But maybe picking JD Vance is a signal that Trump would govern differently. He’s walked a picket line, right? But a review of Vance’s record makes clear that that’s a mirage too. In his short time in the Senate, Vance has rarely missed an opportunity to use his power to undermine the interests of workers. He opposed the PRO Act — the signature legislation to make it easier and fairer for workers to decide whether or not they want a union. He would take health insurance away from low wage workers by repealing the ACA. And he has opposed the nominations of pro-worker nominees to the NLRB, DOL and the judiciary.

Trump’s most obvious adventure in pro-labor cosplay came in how he responded to the UAW’s historic 2023 strikes. He said some words in support of the strike — but did so at a nonunion factory in front of nonunion workers who were being paid to pretend to be UAW members. That performance came in sharp contrast to President Biden who walked a real picket line last year and Vice President Harris who appeared on a UAW picket line in 2019, both talking to real union members about their real commitment to supporting middle class workers’ interests over corporate interests.

The Democratic National Convention, in contrast to the RNC, showcased a genuinely pro-labor, pro-worker, pro-union policy agenda. That’s why it seems likely that American workers are going to stick with Kamala Harris, Governor Tim Walz and the Democratic Party — not because they put a “D” after their names but because voters saw at the DNC what a serious pro-worker agenda looks like.  On the first night of the convention, seven union leaders addressed the delegates.  And more union leaders and union members stepped onto the stage throughout the convention.  Their presence wasn’t treated as a surprise.  They were accorded the respect and status of key players in the Democratic coalition that will help to shape the governing agenda if Harris and Walz win.

And look at Vice President Harris’s record. Throughout her service in the Biden Administration, Harris again and again showed up for working people, putting them at the center of the Administration’s policy. She led the White House Task Force on Collective Bargaining and Worker Empowerment, which coordinated pro-labor policy across the federal government. She has been a leader in advocating for fair pay and decent work conditions for home health aides, childcare workers and others in the care economy. And in the face of opposition of Congressional Republicans, she continues to fight to update our nation’s labor laws to be fairer.

An examination of the one policy where Trump and Harris appear to agree shows the difference between faking a pro-worker pose and setting a pro-worker agenda.  Both Trump and Harris support exempting tipped wages from federal income taxes. But Trump stops there – even though many tipped workers won’t benefit from such a policy because they don’t earn enough to owe income taxes.  Harris and Walz, however, in addition, support giving tipped workers the full minimum wage and raising the minimum wage for all workers. Republicans have blocked both of those policies for years.

The choice couldn’t be clearer.  Kamala Harris picked a union member – Tim Walz, decades long member of a teachers’ union – as her running mate.  Donald Trump spends his time publicly praising a billionaire for firing striking union members.  American workers are smarter than some are giving them credit for – they can tell the difference between a costume and a commitment.