The labor organization representing the U.S. building trades on Thursday endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, giving her the backing of national labor groups that represent more than 11 million workers.
North America's Building Trades President Sean McGarvey praised a $275 billion infrastructure plan Clinton announced this week as "robust, yet entirely practical."
The building trades group is an alliance of 14 unions that represent 3 million skilled craft professionals. One of its member unions, the International Heat and Frost Insulators, endorsed Clinton this week.
Clinton’s support among organized labor is very strong. She now has secured the endorsements of unions representing 75% of unionized workers in the country.
She now has the backing of 16 individual unions, along with the building trades alliance, that collectively represent more than 11 million workers. Roughly 14.6 million workers - about 11.1 percent of the workforce - are union members, according to U.S. government data.
The big fish still out there is the AFL-CIO. In recent elections they have waited to endorse.
The building trades group and the 30,000-member insulators union are both affiliated with the AFL-CIO, a federation of 56 labor unions that collectively represent more than 12 million workers.
The AFL-CIO has not yet endorsed a candidate and has not traditionally done so in recent presidential elections until the party-nominating contests are nearly decided.
Organized labor is a huge part of the Democratic ground game and will be key in helping decide the outcome of the primary and general election in key states.