WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden will travel to Michigan on Tuesday to join United Auto Workers on the picket line in one of the most extraordinary displays of support a president has ever taken in the middle of a labor dispute.
Biden’s trip comes after United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain invited Biden to the picket line in remarks Friday as the UAW ratchets up its strike against the nation’s three largest automakers.
“Tuesday, I’ll go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create,” Biden said in a statement. “It’s time for a win-win agreement that keeps American auto manufacturing thriving with well-paid UAW jobs.”
Further details about Biden’s trip, including which striking site he will visit, remain unclear.
Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner to capture the 2024 Republican nomination, has said he plans to meet with striking auto workers in the Detroit area Wednesday in a push to court rank-and-file union members and other blue-collar workers for his 2024 run.
Biden faced pressure from progressives to join UAW workers on the picket line after Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Sen. Bernie Sanders and others each traveled to striking sites this week.
For the first time Friday, Fain publicly invited Biden to the picket line.
“We invite and encourage everyone who supports our cause to join us on the picket line − from our friends and families, all the way up to the president of the United States,” Fain said.
Biden faces a political tightrope with the UAW strike. He has decades of close ties with organized labor and said he wants to be known as the “most pro-union president” in U.S history. But Biden also wants to avoid national economic repercussions that could result from a prolonged strike.
Biden has endorsed UAW’s demands for higher pay, saying last week that “record corporate profits, which they have, should be shared by record contracts for the UAW.” But at the request of the UAW, Biden has stayed out of negotiations with Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Stellantis.
Fain extended the invitation after announcing plans to expand UAW’s strike to 38 new sites across 20 states. He said the union has made good progress with Ford Motor Co. this week, but General Motors and Stellantis “will need some pushing.”
White House press secretary Jean-Pierre said the White House “will do everything that we possibly can to help in any way that the parties would like us to.”
A White House team led by Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and White House adviser Gene Sperling was originally scheduled to visit Detroit this week. But the trip was scrapped after UAW’s leadership made it clear they did not want help at the negotiating table.
The point of strike is to get what is demanded. Much better outcome for everyone involved (including the very people who are striking) is to get demands satisfied without having to strike. Do you think people strike, because they love doing that? No one does.
He forced them back to work before their demands could be met. That is a fail. He may have gotten something after the fact, but that doesn’t change that he forced workers back to work instead of striking. What if he wasn’t able to get that done?
FWIW, rail workers were asking for 7 sick days a year. 7. And Biden got them 5 with the ability to convert 2 personal days to sick days. As a note, even 7 is a ridiculously low number.
He should have sided with unions then, too. The only reason he’s doing this is because Republicans are saying that the UAW is being damaged by Biden’s policies.
This all-or-nothing approach is what gives you nothing more often then not
My point is, it shouldn’t be Biden inserting himself into what should have been a conversation between the union and the railroad. He forced the union’s hand and then said “trust me”. I want you to imagine a world where a politician forced a company to accept a union’s offer and then told the company to “trust them”.
As if an American politician would ever force a company to accept a union’s (very reasonable, FWIW) offer.
He also robbed the right wing of a “unions bad” moment when a rail strike disrupted the whole economy.
If our infrastructure is so brittle that one strike can disrupt the economy as severely as pro-strikebreaking centrist Democrats say, the current rail companies cannot be trusted to continue operating it.