2023-09-26 19:22:44
The title of most pro-union president in the history of USA who likes to arrogate to Joe Biden can be discussed, but the Democrat gave this Tuesday a paso for which scholars of the labor movement find no precedent. When going to Michigan to give your support for United Auto Workers (UAW for its acronym in English), which since September 15 have been in a historic strike that simultaneously affects dozens of plants of the three main motor giants (Ford, General Motors y Stellantis), the democrat has become the first active occupant of the Oval Office to join the picket line of a strike.
Although they have been just 15 minutesit is about more than just a gesture loaded with symbolism. Biden has organized his trip to Wayne County in the eve of a visit to the same state by Donald Trump, today the Republican candidate with the most potential to repeat the 2020 duel in the presidential elections in November next year. The former president has organized his speech in Detroitin neighboring Wayne County, on Wednesday as seven of his primary rivals square off in a second debate (he did not participate in the first one either).
Both Biden and Trump stage the intense fight for the vote of the working class in pivotal states key, an electorate that has already been fundamental in the last two presidential elections and is predicted to be vital again in 2024. Because Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Michigan in 2016 by fewer than 11,000 ballotsadding up the electoral college votes that had gone to the Democratic candidate continuously since 1988, but In 2020 he lost the state again to Bidenwho not only harvested 150,000 votes ahead but it improved again the results in the union votewith the 62% of the votes compared to Trump’s 37%.
“Solidarity”
Biden has arrived in Michigan taking the gauntlet of a public invitation launched by Shawn Fain, president of the UAW. Abandoning the role of mediator between workers and companies that presidents traditionally adopt, he has intensified its alignment with the firstensuring that it seeks to “show solidarity with men and women of the UAW in accordance They fight for a fair share of the value they help generate“. And although publicly does not go into details of the negotiationsrecalled that after the 2008 crisis it was the workers who made enormous sacrifices when the industry fell.
“They made many sacrifices, they gave a lot when companies were in trouble. Now (companies) are doing incredibly well. You know what? To you They should do incredibly well too.“he said at a General Motors redistribution plant, where the B-24 Liberator bomber used during World War II was built.
Biden has spoken through a megaphone, dressed in a blue jersey, a baseball cap and brown shoes. In his speech he also assured that the striking workers deserve “a significant increase (in salaries) and other benefits”. He has remembered that “Wall Street didn’t build the country, the middle class built the country.”“. And he has also stressed that “it is a fact that unions built the middle class. You deserve what you have earned, and you have earned much more than what they are paying them now“, has declared.
His speech can be encompassed in the defense of his economic agenda, but it resonates especially at a time of growing inequality and when the union movement regains strengthalthough still weak, with surveys showing about 60% of Americans supporting the motor workers strike. The pay of the advisors of the automobile giants They have risen 40% since 2013while the workers have lost 19.3% of its purchasing power since 2008.
Misgivings
Biden, however, also faces misgivings. UAW has not yet endorsed his presidential candidacy, something that other union organizations have done. Some actions by the Democrat are being questioned, who for example signed legislation in December that imposed an agreement on railroad workers who were threatening a strike as they fought to get paid sick leave and guaranteed rest time. And his green transition planwhich aims to raise the share of electric vehicles from the current 5.8% to two thirds by 2032, proposes fears to the unions, who see the danger that production will plants in the south of the country where unions are weaker y that workers who produce electric batteries be paid less than those that manufacture combustion engines.
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Trump exploits those misgivings. He has assured that Biden’s visit is a mere search “for a cheap photo” advertising and has questioned this green transition plan, ensuring in a message on social networks that the Democrat “wants to take away their jobs and give them to China and other countries Foreigners”. However, he is the one who has the most problems with the union leaders. Fain, the president of the UAW, who received Biden at the airport upon landing alongside local Democratic politicians, has criticized the Republican’s trip and warned a few years ago days against “continuing to elect billionaires who They don’t understand at all what it means to live paycheck to paycheck and struggle. and hope that they solve the problems of the working class.
Trump does not plan to join any picket lines this Wednesday. In fact, although he has invited workers who have formed or are part of a union, including the UAW, to his speech, he will offer it in a production plant where there is no union organization.
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