2023-09-26 21:07:05
US President Joe Biden made history this Tuesday by becoming the country’s first active president to join pickets in defense of better working conditions for workers in the automotive sector.
The Democratic president, who boasts of being the most pro-union of all the leaders who have occupied the White House, went to Detroit (Michigan) invited by the president of the union United Auto Workers (UAW)Shawn Fain.
His trip precedes the one that his predecessor, Republican Donald Trump (2017-2021), will also make to Michigan this Wednesday, who with his presence there skips the debate held at the same time (01:00 GMT on Thursday) in California by the conservative candidates for the 2024 presidential elections.
This second displacement, however, has not been supported by the union movement.
Biden arrived in Detroit around 12:00 local time (16:00 GMT) and was received at the airport by Fain himself, who took over the leadership of the union at the beginning of the year and who for the first time in the history of the American automotive company called a simultaneous strike at Ford, Stellantis and General Motors (GM)known as the Detroit Big Three.
With a megaphone, cap and casual clothes, Biden addressed the strikers: “You saved the automotive industry. You made a lot of sacrifices. The companies were in trouble. Now they are doing incredibly well and, you know what, you should too,” he said to applause.
“Wall Street did not build this country. The middle class did it. The unions did it. That’s a fact. Let’s continue. They deserve what they have earned. And they have earned much more than what they are being paid”Biden added.
In previous statements, he had already stressed that he was hopeful that the respective negotiations would reach a successful conclusion and had stressed that employees deserve a “fair” share of the benefits they helped create.
“Today the enemy is not a foreign country thousands of miles away. It is right here in our own area. It is corporate greed”stressed Fain, for whom the way to defeat this greed is to stay united.
“Managers believe the future belongs to them. It belongs to the auto workers. We do the real work. We have the power,” added the unionist.
The UAW began its strike on September 15 at a plant at each of those manufacturers and last week expanded it to another 38 Stellantis and General Motors production centers due to the lack of progress in negotiations with the latter.
“We will close the GM and Stellantis distribution centers until those two companies come to their senses and come to the table with a serious offer“said a combative Fain, whose union represents some 400,000 workers in the United States, last week. of which about 145 thousand are part of GM, Stellantis and Ford.
The UAW demands salary increases of 40% distributed over the next four years, the elimination of salary differences between plant workers of the same companies, greater guarantees of job security and recovering the aid they had until 2009 to compensate for the increase in the cost of living.
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