The United Auto Workers union endorsed President Biden on Wednesday, giving him a powerful boost as he battles former President Donald J. Trump to gain support from labor groups.
Biden, who calls himself the “most pro-union president in history,” delighted striking UAW workers, but drew the ire of auto industry executives when he appeared on picket lines with workers last fall. I bought it. Months later, UAW President Sean Fein told the National Labor Conference that Biden has a track record of helping working-class people organize for higher wages, retirement benefits and better health care. Ta.
“This is a power grab for the working class,” Fein said Wednesday after a lengthy speech comparing Biden’s past pro-union speeches to Trump’s lack of support and visits to non-union facilities. This is nothing more than the best way to do so.” He called Trump a “scab,” an abbreviation for someone who refuses to support unions.
“This election is about who stands with us and who stands in our way,” Fein said as many in the crowd rose to their feet. “Our support has to be earned, and Joe Biden has earned it.”
The value of this endorsement, which the UAW foregone last year amid concerns about Biden’s pledge to foster good jobs in electric vehicle manufacturing, was less in persuading members to support Biden than in motivating them to vote. It may be attached. The union estimates that only about 30% of its members supported Trump in 2016. But without formal union support and investment in turnout, Mr. Biden could suffer a decline in union members showing up to vote in key battleground states. Like Michigan.
“Electing is not just about choosing your best friend for the job or the candidate who makes you feel good,” Fein said. “Elections are about power.”
Biden campaign officials say the race between the two candidates is just beginning after Trump’s performance in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, which all but sealed the nomination.
Fein, who has been a vocal critic of Trump in the past, didn’t mince words in his remarks Wednesday. Mr. Fein reflected on the 2008 financial crisis and highlighted Mr. Trump’s past anti-union comments at the time and as a presidential candidate. And he recalled Biden’s remarks as vice president that “the nation bet on American autoworkers and won.” In response, attendees shouted obscenities at Mr. Trump. “I love the energy,” Fein replied.
Showing slideshows and visual aids, Fein said Trump “hasn’t said anything” about supporting autoworkers during labor disputes as president because “he doesn’t care about American workers.” said. He compared Mr. Trump’s appearance at a non-union factory in September to a photo of Mr. Biden on a picket line and urged those in attendance to stand up and shout “Joe!” Joe! Joe! ”
Still, Mr. Fein engaged the president in advocacy work.
Biden attended several UAW events to demonstrate his integrity to UAW leaders and the public. In September, Biden took a bullhorn to a Michigan auto workers strike, becoming the first sitting president to join a picket line in an unusual show of support for workers demanding better wages. Upon winning his contract, Mr. Biden appeared before wearing a red T-shirt and celebrating Illinois workers.
“I’ve been involved with the UAW longer than you’ve been alive,” the then-80-year-old president said at a November event after the union reached deals with Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. spoke to a raucous audience. This includes pay raises and the reopening of its Belvidere, Illinois, factory.
At the event, he criticized Trump for claiming that electric vehicles would lead to the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs.
“Like almost everything else he says, he’s wrong,” Biden said at the time. “And you proved him wrong. At the cost of lower wages, you earned record profits. At the cost of fewer jobs, you were able to take on thousands more jobs.”
Union officials often say that Biden has been more vocal in support of organized labor than any president in recent decades.he appeared in the video As Amazon workers in Alabama seek to unionize, they warned that “there must be no intimidation, coercion, intimidation or anti-union propaganda” and called on Kellogg to come up with a plan to permanently replace striking workers. (The strike was resolved before the company took that action.)
The UAW was an early supporter of Biden’s green energy policies, but has complained about the lack of support for auto industry unions in the Inflation Control Act, the major climate bill the president signed into law in 2022. embraced.
Assembling an electric car requires less labor than assembling a car with an internal combustion engine. To make up for lost assembly jobs, the UAW is taking advantage of generous tax breaks included in Biden’s climate bill to open rapidly building battery factories and other electric vehicle parts factories. I want to get organized. They are also expanding into electric car makers, which have long resisted union organizing.
“The transition to electric vehicles is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom,” Fein wrote in an internal memo last May, prompting unions to at least temporarily withhold support for Biden. The plan was announced. “We want national leaders to turn their backs on this before we make any commitments.”
The next month, Fein announced that the Biden administration had ordered Ford to build three electric vehicle batteries in Tennessee and Kentucky without any commitment from the company to create good-paying union jobs in Tennessee and Kentucky. He expressed dissatisfaction with the award of a $9 billion government loan to build the factory.
Biden’s team has strengthened its ties with labor unions. He appointed Michigan native Gene Sperling, a longtime Democratic policy strategist, to be his liaison with labor unions and the auto industry. In August, the president’s administration announced $12 billion in subsidies and loans for electric vehicle manufacturing, giving priority to companies that support high-wage jobs in unionized regions. Mr. Sperling was also in regular contact with his union leaders in preparation for and during the strike.
Biden also used the National Labor Relations Board, Department of Transportation, Department of Labor, and even the Environmental Protection Agency to make it easier for unions to organize through rules attached to government subsidies and incentives. Even after the UAW’s 46-day strike ended successfully with significant wage increases, Biden accepted the union’s promise to focus on organizing nonunion automakers like Tesla, Volkswagen, and Hyundai.
Administration officials said Biden’s decision to take a picket line in Michigan angered auto industry executives, but the president remains determined to make clear where he stands on the labor dispute. Ta.
Mr. Trump took advantage of ordinary members of the UAW, if not the UAW’s leadership, to campaign against and show support for Mr. Biden’s “ridiculous Green New Deal movement.” A day after Biden joined the UAW picket line, Trump held a rally at a nonunion auto parts factory in Michigan, vying for the support of blue-collar workers in the critical battleground state.
Mr. Fein has long made it clear that his leadership would never support the former president.
“I don’t think this man has any idea what the workers of our country stand for, what the working class stands for,” Mr. Fein said in September. “He serves the billionaire class, and that’s the problem with this country.”
Still, the endorsement is politically complicated for Fein. In addition to having a significant number of members favorable to Trump, the UAW also includes vocal liberals who are skeptical of Biden. Liberal members, many of whom are graduate students and academic researchers, have criticized the president over his support for Israel during the Gaza war. The union itself is calling for a ceasefire.
At the conference, several UAW members said they had seen how the war in Gaza had divided their ranks.
“There are people in this line who are hurting. They have families and I’m worried about them,” said Daniel Dunbar, 67, a retired auto worker from Flint, Michigan.