President Joe Biden is set to join members of the United Auto Workers union Tuesday in Wayne County, Michigan, walking the picket line on the eve of a visit from former President Donald Trump.
The trip comes as Biden faces consistently low polling numbers on his handling of economic issues, and, back in Washington, the looming threat of a government shutdown this week. Both a prolonged strike and a shutdown could have economic consequences – something the White House is seeking to avoid as Biden tries to convince voters his economic policies are working. He’s also appearing in the battleground state of Michigan just one day before his chief political rival – whom he defeated in the 2020 presidential election – comes to the crucial swing state to make his own appeal to union workers.
Trump, the front-runner in the GOP presidential primary race, is scheduled to skip the second Republican debate to deliver a prime-time speech to an audience of current and former union members, including from the UAW, in Detroit on Wednesday. Trump has slammed the president for the visit, claiming Biden “had no intention” of walking the picket line until Trump said he would make a speech in Michigan.
A far cry from just 10 months ago when he blew up the railway picket line.
I had read that the Biden administration kept pressuring the railways behind the scenes after the strike was averted till the unions got what they had wanted in the first place anyway.
I don’t know where I first read it but this link seems to confirm it.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/01/railroad-workers-union-win-sick-leave
“We’re very happy about this. We’ve been trying to get this for decades,” said Artie Maratea, president of the Transportation Communications Union. “It was public pressure and political pressure that got them to come to the table.”
Or from the union themselves at https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement. Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.
That really doesn’t mean anything since the IBEW was one of the unions that was willing to sign the railroads’ contract before the strike. It was the other unions that railroads dealt with that rejected that deal and would’ve gone on strike if Biden and Congress hadn’t stopped them.
Only some unions got part of what they wanted
Further on in that article,
But the unions representing workers who operate the trains day to day, such as the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, have had far less success reaching agreement on paid sick days. “The railroads went to the non-operating crafts first and cut a deal with them,” said Mark Wallace, first vice-president of the Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. “If a carman [who inspects and repairs railcars] has to call in sick and doesn’t come to work, the train will still run. If the engineer or conductor has to call in sick, the train is probably not going to go that day.”
Wallace said his union was negotiating with the major railroads, but said they were seeking to make it harder for the operations workers than non-operational workers to take paid sick days – perhaps by giving them demerits when they do.
I saw that story from a distance but didn’t really follow it. How did Biden negatively impact the workers striking against the railroads?
The railway strike would’ve caused shortages of chlorine for city water supplies, shortages of essential medicines like insulin and antibiotics, severe food insecurity and inflation, and would’ve led to millions of people losing their jobs. Railway freight accounts for 40% of freight transport in the US. Imagine 40% of everything that’s made every day suddenly not getting to where it needs to go. There’s a reason Congress has never refused to block a railway strike every time it’s been threatened over the last 150 years.
The contract was good for the workers but didn’t include paid sick days. Congress imposed the contract on the rail workers when a couple of unions didn’t ratify it (although most of the unions did).
Biden kept working behind the scenes after signing the law Congress passed to block the strike and got the rail workers their sick days without the suffering a rail strike would’ve had on the millions of Americans who were already struggling with high inflation on essentials. The IBEW union explicitly thanked him for it: https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
Imagine if more people knew this. They only saw “Biden bad for unions” and parrot the line while it’s more “Biden administration weighs the challenges of a strike that would hurt common people, finds alternate path to satisfy all parties.”
I’ve tried to make this argument on the more extreme political communities and the arguments supporting a strike ranged from “everyone would blame the rail companies” to “the damage to unions is worse” to “all those people without jobs would rise up in protest to support the unions” to “it wouldn’t be that bad, it’s being exaggerated by the corporate media.”
It shows just how privileged those people are to actually think that when people who are already living paycheck to paycheck, rationing insulin to survive, and barely managing to feed their families suddenly lose their income, can’t get insulin, see food prices double, and can’t even drink the tap water anymore because of a “rail strike”, they’re going to understand the nuance of the situation and blame rail companies for not giving the workers sick days.
Why not force the companies to accept the union terms then instead of the other way around? Why is it always workers who have to capitulate to capital? The reason the government always interferes because we’re ruled by capital and business interests.
If they’re that important then they should have had all their issues addressed, including safety issues.
Also, the original contract was not good for the workers and that’s why it wasn’t ratified. The higher up union officials haven’t been connected to the rank and file, hence their bad original deals and the IBEW boot licking statement. To be honest the safety issues from Presision Schedules Railroading still aren’t addressed and they’ve only gotten a small amount of the sick days they asked for (Europe gets like 10-15, they got 4-6). It’s something, but it’s pathetic. You can’t say you’re the most friendly labor president and then sign a law destroying a strike. Instead, he should have made speeches blaming the railroad companies and tried to negotiate without signing the law destroying the strike, instead using the threat of a Congress law to force them to come to the table (which it sounds like he did, but only after destroying the unions leverage and absorbing the only power workers have). This was after the midterms so it’s not like he had to worry about an immediate election.
For the record, I get why he did it, but I still disagree that it was the right move, or the only move. There are European countries that have rail strikes, and they manage to survive those apocalypses, and keep a healthier labor movement at the same time.
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People here have no concept of nuance here. He didn’t kick down the door and arrest the rail CEOs to force a concession, so he might as well be in league with the Pinkertons to them.
Sir/Mam, this is the internet. There is no place for nuance and full understanding of a topic around these parts.
Raaar, hiss, Biden bad, trump good, Biden good, trump bad, yada yada etc.
By saying that he would intervene with the national guard if railway workers actually striked.
100 years later, and still willing to gun down workers if profitable.
I don’t know anything about this claim that the national guard would be used. BUT, I think that would be more so the national guard would be used to move anyone blocking rail lines and possibly compelled to operate the railway.
The national guard has no power to “force” a rail worker to work on the railroad.
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That’s exactly what I said. The national guard did not force anyone to work
as the person I responded to implied(edit: I think I misread their comment in part, so that’s part of the confusion). In any case, to they were deployed to allow strike breakers to get to work, and to reduce violence. Ultimately, they screwed up when their forces were cut and became the violence they were deployed to prevent; these old strikes were not the “peaceful protest” strikes we see today, they could get quite violent.
He actively pushed for, and passed, legislation that effectively forbade rail workers from picketing
Weird how he both ended the strike and the striking workers got everything they asked for soon after.
It’s almost as if he were a competent president that was working towards the best outcome for Americans in that situation.
11/12 of those railway unions had agreed to the newly achieved negotiated terms.
Shame that so many on the picket line are MAGAts. Democrats are helping a group who’s members have fallen for Trump.
That’s the right thing to do. Help people who need help.
“I’m gonna only help people who support me, if you don’t support me I’ll fuck you over” is a Trump way to think.
They need to be won back over, and the way you do that is basically the same way Trump did in the first place: by making them feel seen, supported, and important.
And lies, don’t forget the lies
And a constant 24/7 opinion news cycle telling them what the party wants them to hear.
I don’t totally disagree with this, but you don’t flip people with a single gesture. Dems have been out wasting their time for years now on fringe groups who represent a few percentage points when it comes to our total population, all while the masses have felt neglected. When is this going to change? You don’t win elections by pandering to teeny, tiny minority groups. You win elections by listening and communicating with those groups that should be representing your core Base.
You say that but non-hispanic white people make up “only” 60% of the population, and many of those people think that conservativism is insane and also want to support the remaining 40%. Almost any LGBT+ white people will be on that side as well.
That also begs the question that with nearly half the country being visible minorities and huge chunks of the majority being other forms of minority what do you mean by “those groups that should be representing your core base”?
I’ll also agree that a party’s core base should be broader than “just enough to win” and there’s no reason that salt-of-the-earth labourers and such can’t be taken care of too, especially since there’s a fair amount of overlap.
I think they hope that the pandering endears the majority of decent people to their cause. Unfortunately, the majority of people aren’t decent, substantially lack the ability to empathize, and are struggling just as much as the minority groups Dems elevate. It’s shitty identity politics and I understand why a large group of “out of touch” blue collar workers got tired of it. It’s not just they who are out of touch, and it’s certainly not them trying to win national elections.
It is totally not surprising that the Lemmings here have downvoted your comment since they are some of the people who have been bamboozled the most in this identity politics bullshit. The Dems need to stick to the economy and just about nothing else. A strong economy fixes almost everything else. Enough with this pronoun garbage. Enough with being race-baited endlessly. Enough with fringe groups who couldn’t swing a school board meeting election, let alone the race to the White House.
I’m a union worker and I am dismayed when I go to Union BBQs or gatherings, and the local conservative politician is there shaking hands, and half the workers want to vote for him. Meanwhile that same conservative politician is openly anti Union. The amount of union workers who vote for anti Union conservatives is crazy
It doesn’t help that the local Democrat that represents that region (or whats to, at least) doesn’t even show up to these union cookouts. That only helps perpetuate the idea that Democrats live in ivory towers and aren’t connected to average Joes.
Shame that so many on the picket line are MAGAts.
That’s wild. Don’t they know unions and organized labor is socialism?! /s
But really I’m surprised there are many Republicans and Trumpers who are unionized. I guess they don’t actually care about their supposed principles if their welfare is on the line.
They never have. Ayn Rand was on welfare for crying out loud.
They are socially minded as far as their job, their safety and their rights as workers go … when they go home, everything is to the right and far right.
Just about every manual labourer I’ve ever known was a conservative at heart and I know several blue collar workers that are far right.
They’ll fight the social fight for their group … they won’t do the same for anyone else.
I’m an NDP party supporter in Ontario in Canada. The New Democratic Party here is the left leaning party in Canada. It’s the third major party here with the Liberals to the right of us and the Conservatives to the right of the Liberals.
Just because we have a left leaning party doesn’t mean that everyone supports it. It’s a freaking weird discovery when you dig into party loyalties and where individual members lay their priorities.
The average manual labourer and blue collar worker will fight tooth and nail for workers rights, their jobs, their rights and their safety and well being. They’ll throw their organizational support to the NDP to defend those rights.
But when it comes to voting as individual people … the majority of them are conservatives at heart.
It’s a sobering thought … as a group they’re social liberals … but as individuals they are conservatives.
I’ve been to NDP party conventions where I was warned about this. Just because a group of people support your party for one reason, it doesn’t mean it’s members support everything you stand for.
It’s the main reason why socially minded parties don’t get ahead … they are supported by single issue groups that don’t vote and only advocate for a cause … and the individual members are easily swayed to vote for the parties they are fighting against.
It’s freaking weird.
Walk down the aisle of most union manufacturing facilities in the US, and you will see Trump sticker after Trump sticker after Trump sticker on people’s toolboxes. In a Union shop. This would have been unheard of a generation ago. Their Union representatives talk the big talk about supporting Democrats, but the rank-and-file union members go team Traitor. So pardon me while I have little support for all the union discussions in recent years because ultimately Democrats are fighting the good fight only to end up helping people who will vote these same Democrats out of office. And then don’t even get me started on Police unions. The clowns in here and claim all they want that police unions aRe DiFfErEnT, but in the end, they really aren’t. Police unions serve the same purpose that regular unions do, and that is defend the rank-and-file at all costs and that means keeping the bad apples from being fired.
Democrats are helping people… ideology and morals have to come into play eventually
I it could go either way, but I’m betting on Biden who is great at retail politics.
