US President Joe Biden will travel to Michigan on Tuesday to support the United Auto Workers strike against the Detroit automakers.
Biden, as a Democrat, has positioned himself as a pro-union president, and his visit, scheduled a day before Donald Trump arrives in the state, will underscore his support for the right of union workers to take action and engage in collective bargaining.
“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. It’s time for a win-win agreement that keeps American auto manufacturing thriving with well-paid UAW jobs.”
Biden is running for re-election in 2024 and is likely to compete with Trump, the Republican presidential favourite. A Trump campaign official said Biden’s trip to Michigan was a “cheap” move to gain voter support.
The only reason Biden is going to Michigan on Tuesday is because President Trump announced he is going on Wednesday.
On Friday, the UAW invited Biden to attend a picket of workers and said it would expand its strike in Detroit to parts distribution centres across the United States at General Motors and parent company Chrysler Stellantis. The UAW claimed it had made a real progress in negotiations with Ford Motor.
Jeremi Suri, a historian and presidential scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, said presidents visited strikers very seldom, adding that even pro-Labour Democratic President Jimmy Carter never attended a picket.
“It’s very rare for a president to visit strikers. This would be a major, major shift for Biden to identify the presidency with striking workers, rather than siding with industry or staying above the fray.”
Numerous unions have already endorsed Biden’s re-election, but the UAW has so far withheld its support. However, the fate of both the Detroit Three and the union depends on federal policy decisions.
Automakers are counting on billions of dollars in Washington subsidies for electric vehicle production, negotiating future emissions rules that would require a transition to electric vehicles. The industry believes the switch will prove too fast and too expensive.
The UAW, meanwhile, is concerned that the transition to electric vehicles will mean job losses because fewer parts are involved in production.
Trump will travel to Detroit to speak at a rally in an effort to win back voters who defected to Biden during his 2020 victory. The former president did not specify whether he would attend the picket lines.
Earlier this week, UAW president Shawn Fain criticised Trump as the union was “fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriched people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers.”
According to historian Suri, the last US president to show such support for striking workers was probably Theodore Roosevelt. In 1902, he invited disgruntled coal miners to the White House to settle a coal shortage.
Like Biden, Roosevelt then found he had little leverage to negotiate.
“There is literally nothing … the national government has any power to do. I am at wit’s end how to proceed.”
Workers are experiencing mixed feelings about Biden’s visit. Laura Zielinski, 55, of Toledo, Ohio, doesn’t mind the president supporting the strikers. People like 60-year-old Thomas Morris say they appreciate Biden’s support for unions.
It would bring a lot of publicity and help the fight.
