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Joe Biden is set to join striking car workers on a picket line in Michigan on Tuesday ahead of a separate visit to the state by Donald Trump later this week, as the political battle for blue collar support heats up in industrial America ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The move by Biden is seen as historic because his predecessors have seldom sided with workers in labour disputes, and he has cast himself and gained credit from the left of the Democratic party for being the most union-friendly US president in decades.
But Biden’s decision also reflects the difficult reality for the White House that he has not locked up the support of rustbelt voters ahead of the election, despite policies designed to boost industrial America through sweeping manufacturing subsidies.
Pressure on Biden to make the stop in Michigan had been mounting in recent days after Shawn Fain, the leader of the United Auto Workers, had invited the president to join the striking workers.
Trump pre-empted the president by earlier announcing that he would hold a rally in Clinton Township, north of Detroit, this week, in a bid by the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to regain traction in a state that backed him in 2016 over Hillary Clinton but voted for Biden in 2020.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden’s decision to visit Michigan was “absolutely not” made in response to Trump’s planned event, but because of the president’s desire to back the UAW.
“He is pro-UAW. He is pro-workers,” Jean-Pierre said. “He believes that there could be a win-win agreement here, but he’s always going to stand on the side of workers.”
The UAW represents about 400,000 members, with about 146,000 spread among the carmakers traditionally dubbed the Big Three: Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.
The union has been on strike for 11 days, with the number of striking facilities expanding on Friday from three assembly plants in three states to include 38 parts distribution centres in nine states. Only Stellantis and GM facilities were targeted in the expansion, with Fain citing progress at the bargaining table with Ford.
The UAW is asking for a 36 per cent pay rise over four years, a 32-hour work week and for all workers to be paid on the same wage scale. The White House has not backed those demands, but has said any UAW contract should reflect the profits earned by car companies.
“I think the UAW gave up an incredible amount back when the automobile industry was going under . . . they saved the automobile industry,” Biden said on Monday. “Now the industry is roaring back they should participate in the benefit of that.”
A recent Morning Consult poll found that 54 per cent of US adults support the strike, compared with 51 per cent before it started.
While Biden has received an early endorsement for re-election from the AFL-CIO, the US’s largest trade union federation — which includes the UAW — the auto workers union has withheld its explicit support.
“Our endorsements are going to be earned,” Fain told CBS this month. “We expect action, not words.”
Labour historian Dana Frank, a professor emerita at University of California-Santa Cruz, said it was significant that Biden had intervened in this dispute, particularly given he stayed neutral in strikes by writers and actors and also undercut a planned strike by railway workers last year.
“He didn’t choose to intervene in any of the Los Angeles strikes, which he could have, and he chose to throw the [railway workers] to the wolves,” she said. “His hand is being forced by Trump, and Trump’s ability to weasel his way into the mind of white, working-class men in the Midwest.”
Ahead of Trump’s own trip to Michigan his campaign released an ad in which he said he “always” had the “back” of US autoworkers. But in a social media post he said the UAW would be “toast” if it did not endorse him.
Democrats said that Trump’s record while he was in office, including policies that undercut collective bargaining rights, undermined his argument.
“The former president showing up in Michigan is almost a joke except it’s not funny, in terms of what he promised and what he did not deliver,” Nancy Pelosi, a congresswoman and former Democratic House speaker, told reporters on Monday.
Republicans have criticised Biden broadly over his support for the energy transition and incentivising the manufacturing of electric vehicles. But they have been divided over support for the UAW specifically, with some congressional Republicans backing the unions while criticising the companies.
“If they want to go along with all this climate stuff, they being these companies, and they want to send more jobs to China, I’m not going to defend them,” said Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri.
Additional reporting by Lauren Fedor
