PHILADELPHIA _ Former Vice President Joe Biden leaned hard into his long history of support for and from organized labor Tuesday, telling hundreds of union members in Philadelphia he has never let them down.
"The bad news is I've been around a long time," Biden said at a Democratic presidential forum at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. "The good news is I've been around a long time. You all know me."
Biden described an America economy that pits wealthy corporations against unions and their organizers, vowing to make chief executive officers at larger companies personally pay a $50,000 fine for each instance where employees are prevented from joining a union.
"Folks, we can do without Wall Street," Biden said. "Wall Street did not build America. Ordinary middle class America built America."
The former U.S. senator from Delaware used the event, hosted by the Philadelphia AFL-CIO, to draw a distinction with some of this Democratic competitors on health care. Biden said his health care policy, if he is elected, would allow union members to keep private health care plans won through collective bargaining.
"You've broken your neck to get it," Biden said. "You've given up wages to keep it. And no plan should be able to take it away."
Philadelphia AFL-CIO President Pat Eiding opened Tuesday's event by urging union members to immediately tune into presidential politics to learn about the candidates and issues.
"Not January. Not after the primary. But right now," Eiding said.
Tuesday's event grew out of concern Eiding expressed in May to local unions in a meeting he called after Biden formally announced his candidacy with a rally at a union hall in Pittsburgh, followed by a fundraiser at the Philadelphia home of Comcast Executive Vice President David L. Cohen.
Eiding said then "this whole Joe Biden thing kind of disturbs me a little bit," referring to an early groundswell of support for the new candidate with the best name recognition, who quickly became the party's front-runner in polling. He noted at the time union support was equally important to candidates as deep-pocketed donors.
Biden exacerbated the concern by dragging his feet on committing to appear at Tuesday's event and making a play for a stand-alone meeting with the union members, which was denied.
Eiding also expressed concerns that nearly 200,000 union members in his council supported Trump in the 2016 presidential election, saying they were "fooled by his message."
The Cooperative Congressional Election Study, carried out by a consortium of 99 universities, estimated that about 38% of union members nationally voted for Trump four years ago, based on its post-election polling.
The national AFL-CIO, with more than 12 million members, backed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016.
The Philadelphia chapter has shown its pique for Democratic politics before. Eiding's council was part of a national "Workers Stand for America" rally on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in 2012, a political show of force to demonstrate anger at the Democratic National Committee for holding its convention in Charlotte, N.C., a state seen unfriendly to labor unions.
Eiding, in an op-ed published in The Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday, noted that a recent Gallup Poll found public support for labor unions at a nearly 50-year high. Tuesday's event was an effort to "tip the balance of power back toward everyday people, not wealthy corporations and special interests," Eiding wrote.
The national AFL-CIO on Thursday said it would hold a candidate forum next spring to "ensure members have the opportunity to meet and assess" their choices for president. National President Richard Trumka, while publicly issuing a questionnaire for the candidates, declared "the labor movement is entering this process with a higher bar than ever before."
