Joe Biden visited the Detroit Auto Show in September of last year accompanied by Mary Barra, president of General Motors. This Tuesday he will return to Michigan, but this time to support those who are striking against the Big Three of Detroit: General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. The president of the United States will make history by joining the picket protests, picking up the gauntlet thrown down this Friday by the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, Shawn Fain. Just over a year before the elections in which re-election is at stake, Biden, who declares himself the most pro-union president in history, wants to show his support for a segment of the population whose vote may be key in decisive states.
“On Tuesday I will go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of the UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create. “It’s time to reach a win-win deal that keeps the American auto industry thriving with good-paying jobs for the UAW,” the president has written in X, the social network formerly called Twitter.
It was the response to an express and public invitation issued earlier by the union leader. “We invite and encourage everyone who supports our cause to join us on the picket line, from our friends and family to the president of the United States. We invite you to join our fight. The way you can help is by building our movement and showing businesses that the public is with us and is with our elected national negotiators,” Fain had said shortly after 10 a.m., in the speech in which he called on extend the strike to 38 component distribution centers throughout the country.
There is no precedent for a US president joining a strike picket, although it is unclear what form his visit will take and where it will take place. In 1937, then Vice President John Nance Garner supported federal intervention to end the historic strike at the Flint (Michigan) auto body plant, the seed of the UAW, but the idea was rejected by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The president urged General Motors, then the largest company in the world, to recognize the union, which would become a very influential political player in the following decades.
The president of the United States campaigned insistently with the unions before the legislative elections of the middle of his term to retain the worker vote of three traditionally Democratic states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan) that are part of the so-called rust belt of the United States. , where heavy industry was concentrated. In all three he won in 2020, after Trump was given the presidency in 2016.
The Republican candidates have insistently criticized his closeness to the unions. Biden also tweeted a video this Friday that alternates these criticisms from the right with images of him supporting the workers and their union leaders and a single word: “Yes.”
Biden had already shown his sympathies for the cause of motor workers last week in a brief appearance at the White House. “Automotive companies have seen record profits, even in recent years, thanks to the extraordinary skill and sacrifices of UAW workers. In my opinion, those record profits have not been shared fairly with those workers,” he said at the time. “In short, auto industry workers helped create the American middle class. “They deserve a contract that supports them and the middle class,” he added.
“I understand the frustration of the workers. For generations, workers sacrificed so much to keep the sector alive and strong, especially during the economic crisis and pandemic. Workers deserve a fair share of the benefits they help create for a company,” he insisted, reiterating his idea that strong unions are needed to have a strong economy. Regarding the negotiators, he said then: “They have worked tirelessly and the companies have made some significant offers. But I think they should go further to ensure that record corporate profits translate into record deals for the UAW.”
Biden tasked acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su and White House senior adviser Gene Sperling with acting as mediators “to offer their full support to the parties in reaching an agreement.”
With his unprecedented move, Biden is ahead of Trump, who plans a rally with union workers in Detroit also next week, on Wednesday, to counterschedule the second Republican primary debate, scheduled for that day at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. in Simi Valley (California).
Although he approved tax cuts for companies and high incomes, Trump is aware that to be elected president he needs to attract the vote of those workers disenchanted with globalization and the loss of purchasing power in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin. In the state of Michigan, Trump won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, but lost the 2020 election against Joe Biden. It is, along with Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, one of the competitive states where the result of the presidential elections on November 5, 2024 will be decided.
According to The New York Times, which advanced the former president’s plans, Trump plans to speak before more than 500 workers, and his campaign plans to fill the room with a controlled and chosen audience made up of plumbers, pipe fitters, electricians and automobile workers. The union leader published a statement after learning of the former president’s plans, showing his hostility: “Every fiber of our union is pouring into the fight against the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers. “We cannot continue to elect billionaires and millionaires who have no understanding of what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to get ahead and expect them to solve the problems of the working class,” he said.
Biden’s campaign also lashed out at him. “Donald Trump is going to Michigan next week to lie to workers and pretend that he didn’t spend much of his entire failed presidency selling them out at every turn. (…) No self-serving photo op can erase Trump’s four years of abandoning union workers and siding with his ultra-rich friends,” tweeted Ammar Moussa, spokesman for the president’s re-election campaign.
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