President Joe Biden on Tuesday joined a picket line with striking autoworkers in Michigan, supporting their call for a 40% pay raise and saying they deserve a “lot more” than they are getting.
Biden’s appearance, the first visit by a U.S. president to striking workers in modern history, comes a day before Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner for president, will speak to auto workers in Michigan. The rare back-to-back events highlight the importance of union support in the 2024 presidential election, even though unions represent a tiny fraction of U.S. workers.
Democrat Biden traveled to a Belleville, Michigan, parts distribution center owned by General Motors (GM.N), and joined dozens of picketers outside. “Companies were in trouble, now they’re doing incredibly well. And guess what? You should be doing incredibly well, too,” Biden said through a bullhorn. “Stick with it.”
Then perhaps they shouldn’t have accepted it and striked as planned? The fact that it wasn’t “enough” for the workers isn’t on the POTUS and doesn’t negate his actions.
They kind of kick-started this years huge labor push. Sure, it was bubbling up for a while before the rail unions decided to take action but they were the first “big” players to threaten a strike in a while. It’s easy to say that from the sidelines after the fact but they were being vilified by national media 24/7 for weeks, getting a bunch of pressure from Congress and being threatened to have the book thrown at them if they decided to strike. They were early to the party and didn’t have all of it’s completely understandable.
It’s also completely valid to criticize Biden for not doing enough when it really mattered, he could’ve put more pressure on Congress, he could’ve visited the workers and given his approval. He’s clearly capable of these things when it suits his interests, why didn’t he do any of that for the rail unions? Surely they could’ve used the help. Why was “working in the background” good enough for them but all of a sudden it’s insufficient for the UAW?
The labor movement is a positive feedback loop of direct action. I’m still contending with the fact that I’m a major player in the labor movement within tech, but I can trace the labor action of the last few months directly to CODE-CWA forming to help organize Google workers in 2020. Labor action fuels labor action. The ABK Workers Alliance were inspired by Paizo, who inspired Vodeo Workers United, who inspired ABKWA members to unionize at Raven into GWA, who inspired more tech unions to form, who inspired SBWU to perform militant labor actions, who inspired WGA and SAG-AFTRA (they work in the games industry).
Edit: I feel like downvotes are coming from my claim about being a major player in the labor movement. Without revealing who I am or where I work, my workplace will be the largest union in tech when we file, beating ZWU by approximately 160 people. I’m the lead organizer of this campaign, and we have approximately 40% card saturation (the campaign started very abnormally). There is almost 0% chance anyone has seen my name outside of my home town, except my labor actions have placed me on an obscure games media podcast talking about GDC, in a picture of a CWA newsletter, and I was quoted on an article from WSJ regarding my activism.
Criticism is totally fine and often deserved, I’m just saying using the rail strike (or any past Biden ball-drops) as a measuring stick for this one servers little purpose and detracts from the core issue. He should be held to task for those things when it comes election time, not fielding “but what about XYZ?” statements.
Launching an illegal strike is far different from launching a legally protected strike. They’d have to accept the possibility that everyone loses their jobs and some people might even get taken to court. Things just aren’t that bad yet.
Fair point! Thanks.