As auto workers strike deadline nears, Biden’s union connections face a crucial test.
The Battle Over Auto Workers’ Strike Puts Biden in a Bind
The prospect of more than 140,000 automotive manufacturer workers striking, predominantly in the election battleground state of Michigan, is a problem for President Joe Biden.
Self-described as both the ”most pro-union president” and a “car guy,” Biden has to balance economic concerns with political considerations as he tries to provide the United Auto Workers contract dispute negotiators the space they need for their discussions before their Thursday 11:59 p.m. deadline.
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A UAW strike — as the union seeks a shorter workweek, more paid time off, and more predictability for assembly line workers, while Detroit-based manufacturers General Motors, the Ford Motor Company, and Stellantis want to rely on more temporary workers — looks more likely. But although Biden remains confident a strike will not be necessary, economic ripples will undermine his “Bidenomics” message as he campaigns more before next year’s election and former President Donald Trump appeals to the labor group.
The UAW represents a tenth of 1% of the economy, according to Brookings Institution fellow, Georgetown University professor, and chief economist of the Labor Department during the Clinton administration Harry Holzer.
“It’s big enough to notice,” Holzer told the Washington Examiner. “If the strike lasts and they run through the inventories, some customers might start switching to other companies. … The Michigan labor force would feel it more than anyone else.”
But for Holzer, there are “even odds” the two sides will “settle at the last minute,” with the companies presumably under more pressure to concede, depending on their stockpiles, based on “a tight labor market and with strong consumer demand.”
“The question for them is how much will it cost them to be more generous?” he asked. “If they’re looking at a possible recession in a year or two, you know. … That’s what they’re wrestling with.”
Amid speculation a UAW strike could cost the economy $5 billion, Heritage Foundation’s EJ Antoni similarly downplayed the potential economic consequences because it is difficult to calculate the lost activity, particularly since the strike’s length is unknown.
“Any time you have periods of high inflation, you always get labor unrest,” the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget research fellow said. “But on top of that, we also have a president who is so overtly pro-Big Labor and anti-business that it emboldens the heads of the unions … to take more aggressive action and to essentially try to get higher pay and higher benefits out of the employers, of course, at the expense of a lower number of people actually employed.”
“[Biden’s] policies are doing exactly the opposite of helping these people,” he added. “You need look no further than the inflation data that we got [Wednesday] morning to see that the average American family is about $5,000 poorer today than when Biden took office just going by how much prices have gone up faster than wages.”
Job Creators Network President and CEO Alfredo Ortiz agreed Biden’s pro-union rhetoric had empowered the UAW to overplay “its hand” in the negotiations.
“The union’s ridiculous compensation demands threaten the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of workers, thousands of small businesses that service the Big Three automakers, and even the automakers themselves,” he said. “There is a long list of venerable American companies that have been destroyed by outrageous union demands, and this concern looms especially large for the Big Three automakers that already face stiff competition from car companies based in right-to-work states.”
Regardless, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre underscored that Biden senior adviser Gene Sperling and acting Labor Secretary Julie Su have been “involved” in the UAW negotiations, ”monitoring and having those conversations.”
“The president believes in collective bargaining, has encouraged sides to continue to have that conversation, to continue to be at the table,” she said Wednesday.
Earlier in the briefing, Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jared Bernstein reminded reporters Biden had hosted UAW President Shawn Fain at the White House, spoken to company executives on the phone, and, more broadly, had championed electric vehicle manufacturing. Bernstein similarly dismissed the economic ramifications, insisting instead that “our job is to be ready for any contingency that comes our way.”
“One of the things that unions do is they help more fairly distribute the benefits of growth,” the economist said. “[Biden’s] view is that if you’re helping to bake the pie, if you’re contributing to American productivity … then you want to get a fair shake. And that’s one of the reasons why he’s always supported unions.”
“Pillar one of Bidennomics: empowering workers,” he continued. “He believes the auto workers deserve a contract that sustains middle-class jobs.”
Biden’s average economic approval-disapproval is net negative 21 percentage points, 38%-59%, per RealClearPolitics, before he is scheduled to deliver a Bidenomics address on Thursday afternoon at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland. Trump has seized on the negotiations as an opportunity to scrutinize Biden’s electric vehicle policies and ask the UAW to endorse him rather than the president. Trump won Michigan in 2016 by 11,000 votes, or 0.2 points, but lost in 2020 by 155,000 votes, or 3 points.
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