President Biden joins United Auto Workers picket line in Michigan

The president of the auto workers union said he would not meet with former President Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner, while he is in Michigan this week.

It comes after United Auto Workers union President Shawn Fain and US President Joe Biden joined union members on the picket line in Michigan on Tuesday. Trump is scheduled to give a speech to auto workers in Detroit on Wednesday.

“I find the pathetic irony that the former president is going to a rally for union members at a non-union business,” Fain told CNN.

Fain pointed to Trump’s previous actions, saying that the former president blamed UAW members during the 2008 recession. During his 2016 campaign, Fain said Trump discussed moving jobs to the south where people are paid less.

Fain also criticized then-President Trump’s lack of support for union members at GM when they were on strike in 2019.

A back-and-forth between the White House and reporters traveling with President Joe Biden about his stance on one of the United Auto Workers’ chief demands on Tuesday underscores the delicate balance the administration is seeking amid the strike as Biden makes clear he is on the side of the workers. 

After Biden answered “yes” when asked if he thought union auto workers should get a 40% raise, the White House initially said he didn’t hear the question before conceding he did.

Biden’s comment came as he joined workers on a picket line in Michigan. His answer in the affirmative was notable because White House officials had previously avoided weighing in on the specific demands in the negotiations, saying they were for the two sides to resolve.

As Biden was flying from Michigan to California, a White House official told reporters aboard Air Force One that Biden did not hear the specific question that was asked, according to a pool report filed from the plane.

Reporters traveling with the president challenged that, and the official went on to review audio of the exchange.

The official conceded Biden did respond to the question about whether the workers deserved the 40% wage increase. 

“Yes. I think they should be able to bargain for that,” Biden said. 

The White House has been toeing a careful line during the strike, voicing support for the workers and a pay increase but declining to specifically endorse the union demands. 

Even so, Biden’s decision to join the workers on the picket line — a first for a sitting president — reflected a break from presidential tradition of neutrality during labor disputes. 

President Joe Biden's trip to the picket line in Detroit on Tuesday was historic and “a great day for our members” — but there is still a lot of work left to do, the president of the union said.

United Auto Workers union president Shawn Fain invited Biden to join Tuesday's picket lines after announcing an escalation of the union’s strike last week. The UAW has yet to offer an endorsement of Biden's reelection bid.

Fain said that endorsements for president will come “at the appropriate time,” but right now, “there is still work left to be done."

Earlier this year, Fain was vocal in his criticism of Biden, especially for his administration’s financial support of a transition by the auto industry from traditional gasoline-powered cars to electric vehicles, which the UAW sees as a threat to its members’ jobs.

“This transition is important. We believe in a green economy, but it's got to be a just transition,” he told CNN, emphasizing that he believes a move toward electric vehicles does not hurt his union if “companies do the right thing.”

He blamed automakers for using tax dollars to "finance this transition, but when it comes to taking care of the workers, the companies keep trying to take us backwards. It's unacceptable."

“This is a fight for the future of the working class," he added.

It was a historic moment when President Joe Biden became the first sitting president to join a picket line. He spoke to members of the United Auto Workers on strike in Michigan on Tuesday.

But there’s a reason presidents don’t usually walk picket lines, according to Timothy Naftali, former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.

“Presidents have basically positioned themselves as mediators between both labor and management,” Naftali said Tuesday on CNN, although he noted that Democrats generally lean in their sympathies toward labor while Republicans lean toward management.

Naftali argued Biden is willing to break the norm of the president being viewed as a mediator and instead take public sides.

Trump also wants to claim some support among union members. He will appear in Michigan on Wednesday, although at a non-union facility and without any official sanction by the United Auto Workers.

Trump and Republicans argue that Biden’s push for electric vehicles with taxpayer credits puts union auto jobs at risk and is “stabbing” autoworkers in the back.

That's going to be key to Biden winning a second term — the president will need to find an answer to Trump’s argument about EVs and bring the labor movement he has long supported into alignment with the environmental movement.

The role of unions in US politics: Biden won the White House by rebuilding Democrats’ blue wall of support in heavily unionized Rust Belt states. But it’s important to note that Republicans don’t need to win union households in order to win elections.

When Trump won the blue wall state of Michigan in 2016, he got the support of 40% of union households, compared with Hillary Clinton’s 53%. But when Biden won Michigan in 2020, he got the support of 62% of union households and Trump was under 40%. The shift was similar in Wisconsin.

When President Joe Biden joined a picket line of autoworkers in Michigan on Tuesday, the historic moment offered a preview of next year’s election and underscored the president’s longtime commitment to a worker-centric economy.

Biden was visiting a day ahead of the 2024 Republican frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, who is hoping to cut into Biden’s support among blue-collar voters.

Wearing a UAW ball cap and speaking through a bullhorn, Biden’s overt support for the striking workers was a break from his predecessors’ attempts at neutrality. It offered the most explicit example yet of his bottom-up economic message — one focused on workers and not corporations.

Biden was the first sitting president to walk a picket line, at least in many presidential historians’ recollections. The White House sought to play up the fact, framing it as history in the making.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

A political battleground: For the first time this campaign season, Biden and Trump are competing directly for the same voters, each trying to appeal to union workers on the picket lines in Michigan.

The dueling visits underscore one similarity in otherwise widely divergent political identities: staking out a claim as a champion for the working class. The powerful voting bloc could help decide next year’s election. Biden won Michigan narrowly in 2020, and Trump took the state in 2016.

Biden walks a fine line: Biden bills himself the “most pro-union president in history,” but he is still toeing a line when it comes to his support for the autoworkers.

Until Tuesday, he had not voiced explicit support for the union’s demands on major wage increases — though he has said record profits should translate to record contracts.

When a reporter asked Tuesday whether auto workers deserved a 40% pay raise — as they have demanded — workers standing around the president shouted yes. Biden also responded, “Yes.”

But the White House has reiterated that the administration is not involved in negotiations. Biden has maintained contact with auto executives, including in a phone call in the days before the strike began.

Seeking an endorsement: The UAW has withheld its endorsement so far, expressing concern about some of the ramifications of Biden’s efforts to transition the US auto fleet to electric vehicles.

Given the union’s current contract negotiations, it is perhaps unsurprising the UAW is holding off endorsing any candidate, hoping to extract the most robust support it can.

Speaking at the picket line on Tuesday, UAW President Shawn Fain praised Biden for being the first president to join a picket line. And he spoke out harshly against corporate executives.

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President Joe Biden and UAW President Shawn Fain road together in the Beast, as the presidential limousine is called, from the Detroit airport to the picket line in Wayne County, Michigan. 

The two had a good conversation, talked about workers issues and talked about a “just transition” to electric vehicles, according to a source familiar with the conversation.

Former President Trump plans on visiting Drake Enterprises, a supplier of engine parts, tomorrow in Clinton Township, Michigan. Drake is a non-union shop and the UAW does not consider Trump to be standing in solidarity with unionized workers, the UAW source told CNN.

Drake Enterprises is not involved with the strike in any way, the union source added. 

Tuesday was definitely not the first time that United Auto Workers union President Shawn Fain has denounced billionaires and corporate greed. Those are standard parts of his remarks to members in the last two months.

But it has never gotten anywhere near the attention he got Tuesday, as he made the same remarks standing next to President Joe Biden.

Fain spoke for seven minutes, far longer than 87 seconds that Biden spoke during the President’s appearance on a picket line outside of the a General Motors facility in Wayne County, Michigan. Biden himself sounded a very pro-union, populist tone in his brief remarks.

“Folks, you’ve heard me say many times, Wall Street didn’t build this country, the middle class built this country, and unions built the middle class!” he said, to cheers. “That’s a fact, so let’s keep going. You deserve what you’ve earned, and you’ve earned a hell of a lot more than you’re getting paid.”

But Fain went even farther in his remarks. He referred to the UAW members’ past work building bombers used in World War II, and said, “Today, the enemy isn’t some foreign country miles away, it’s right here in our own area. It’s corporate greed!”

“We’re the people who make this world run. It’s not the billionaire class. It’s not the elite few,” Fain said as Biden looked on. “It’s not some executive who owns our future. It’s us…..That’s the economic reality that corporate executives don’t want us to recognize.”

“These CEOs sit in their offices. They sit in meetings. They make decisions. But we make the product,” Fain said sparking a cheer from the crowd of members on the picket line.

Last year, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin forced Senate leadership to scrap a measure in Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act that would have given cars built by unionized autoworkers a massive boost in the market.

When the House passed its version of the legislation in 2021, it included an extra $4,500 tax credit for consumers who purchase union-made American EVs, which are, as of this moment, only built by the unionized workers at the Big Three of Ford, GM, and Stellantis. The provision had drawn criticism from Tesla, Toyota, and Volkswagen, which build EVs in non-union factories.

To win Manchin's support for the IRA the Senate, Democrats deleted the extra incentives for union-made cars.

The IRA passed with Manchin's vote and was signed into law by President Joe Biden. It included a $7,500 credit for consumers purchasing EVs, whether they were union-built or not.

But the transition to EVs has been a sticking point in talks between UAW and Detroit's Big Three automakers. The UAW has withheld its endorsement of Biden for his re-election bid in part to pressure his administration to ensure a "just transition" for workers in the shift to EVs.

As Americans buy more and more EVs, automakers have been rushing to build enormous battery factories, largely in the more anti-union South.

At the same time, the union fears what will happen to the thousands of unionized workers employed at engine and transmission plants, which only build components for cars with internal combustion engines.

From the union's perspective, the automakers are using the EV transition as an excuse to replace union labor at the engine plants with non-union labor at the battery plants, and an extra incentive for consumers to buy union-made cars would have helped the workers' cause and help put more money in more workers' pockets, instead of going to corporate executives.

This shift to EVs would have been easier for union workers with the extra incentives that Manchin torpedoed.

President Joe Biden spent only 87 seconds encouraging workers on the UAW picket line. In contrast, UAW President Shawn Fain spoke for almost 7 minutes in support of the labor movement.

“Folks, you’ve heard me say many times, Wall Street didn’t build this country, the middle class built this country, and unions built the middle class!” Biden said, to cheers. “That’s a fact, so let’s keep going. You deserve what you’ve earned, and you’ve earned a hell of a lot more than you’re getting paid.”

While President Joe Biden's appearance was the center of attention, Fain used his speech as a way to champion the working class in front of the country's leader.

 “The CEOs think the future belongs to them,” Fain said.”Today belongs to the auto workers in the working class.”

“Thank you, Mr. President, for coming. We know the President will do right by the working class.”