GOP candidates bash labor unions as Biden hits the picket line

Republican presidential candidates are ripping members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union and blaming President Biden for the escalating strike against major car companies.

Biden has touted himself as a stalwart supporter of unions and joined UAW members Tuesday on the picket line in Michigan — the first instance of a sitting U.S. president marching beside striking workers.

As Republicans aim to use dour public opinion of the economy to oust Biden in 2024, his GOP challengers are eager to tie the president to the potential economic toll of the strike.

And some Republican contenders are using the UAW to bolster their conservative bonafides to GOP voters with less than five months until the first primary ballots are cast.

“When you have the most pro-union president and he touts that he is emboldening the unions, this is what you get,” former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said on the Fox News Channel earlier this month.

“When you have a president that’s constantly saying, ‘Go union! Go union,’ this is what you get. The unions get emboldened, and then they start asking for things.”

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Republicans have historically been critical of unions and their roles in pushing for better pay and conditions for workers, particularly since the Reagan administration.

“I think [executive compensation] ought to be left to the shareholders of that company,” former Vice President Mike Pence said in a CNN interview this month.

“I’m somebody that believes in free enterprise. I think those are decisions that can be made by shareholders in creating pressure, and I’ll fully support how these publicly traded companies operate,” he said.

Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.), another GOP presidential contender, lauded former President Reagan’s firing of striking air traffic controllers when asked about the UAW strike.

“If you strike, you’re fired,” Scott said.

This prompted UAW President Shawn Fain to file a charge Thursday against Scott’s campaign with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which administers U.S. labor law.

The charge was obtained by The Hill through a U.S. Freedom of Information Act request with the NLRB. A representative for the NLRB told The Hill the agency will be investigating the charge.

Trump strikes a different tune

While some GOP presidential candidates have been quick to criticize striking autoworkers, former President Trump sought to sound sympathetic.

With a commanding lead in polls of GOP voters, Trump is overlooking the primary and focused on winning back support from blue-collar workers in states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — three states he won in 2016 but lost to Biden in 2020.

Trump slams Biden ahead of president’s visit with striking autoworkers

Trump is scheduled to give a speech in Michigan on the autoworkers strike Wednesday — the night of the second GOP primary debate — and has focused on UAW’s gripes with Biden, not automakers.

The UAW is holding out on endorsing Biden over his push to bolster electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing, which is primarily conducted by nonunion labor and overseas.

Trump said in a Tuesday statement that Biden’s “draconian and indefensible Electric Vehicle mandate will annihilate the U.S. auto industry and cost countless thousands of autoworkers their jobs.”

“The only thing Biden could say today that would help the striking autoworkers is to announce the immediate termination of his ridiculous mandate,” he added.

“Anything else is just a feeble and insulting attempt to distract American labor from this vicious Biden betrayal.”

Other GOP presidential candidates are also aiming their criticisms at Biden’s EV push instead of the workers on the picket line.

“The union workers are going, ‘Wow, if we’re going to switch to all [electric vehicles], we’re going to have less jobs … we’re going to be dependent on China for our transportation needs.’ … They understand what’s happening,” North Dakota governor Doug Bergum said last week, as reported by Reuters.

Why autoworkers are striking

While the shift to EVs has caused alarm among autoworkers, UAW members and their Democratic supporters say the strike is driven by concerns over worker pay.

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There are large differences between executive compensation packages and production worker compensation within the auto industry, as in most industries.

Ford CEO James Farley made $1.7 million in salary in 2022, $2.75 million in final incentive bonus payouts, and $14.5 million in other types of incentives. Altogether, he brought in $20,996,146, the company’s Schedule 14A proxy statement, filed in March of this year, says.

The average salary of a production worker at Ford is $45,843, according to jobs website Indeed. Indeed maxes that position’s salary out at $73,000 per year.

Biden said Tuesday that autoworkers should get the 40 percent pay increase the union is seeking.

“You’ve heard me say many times that Wall Street didn’t build the country — the middle class built the country. Unions built the middle class,” Biden said in Michigan to a gathering of auto workers.

“Let’s keep going. You deserve what you earn.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told The Hill in a Thursday interview that labor is experiencing an important resurgence in American society.

“You’re seeing workers all over the country — at UPS, in the auto industry — standing up and fighting back, and that’s an extraordinarily important moment,” he said.

“What the UAW is saying is that it’s unacceptable that the people at the top of these corporations make outrageous compensation packages while the workers fall further and further behind. That’s the story of what’s happening with the American economy,” Sanders said.

Labor experts describe the UAW strike as a “stand-up strike,” distinguishing it from “sit-down strikes” in which a large mass of workers occupy their workplaces but refuse to work.

Stand-up strikes, in which smaller groups of workers walk off the job in targeted stoppages, make them harder to predict, tactically more aggressive and potentially more disruptive to production schedules, which can be felt further down the pipeline of the auto industry.

“This has also been used in the airlines. I think it was Alaska Airlines in the 1980s that used a similar strategy — they called it actually, ‘CHAOS,’ and I think they trademarked that name — [whereby] they would board the plane, and then all of the flight attendants would walk out and go out on strike,” Arthur Wheaton, a director of labor studies at the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Buffalo, N.Y., told The Hill.

Wheaton said similar tactics were used in the U.S. as far back as the 1930s.

A representative for the Ford Motor Company said Tuesday that workers and management share an interest in the “long-term viability” of the domestic auto industry.

“Ford and the UAW are going to be the ones to solve this by finding creative solutions,” the company said in a statement.

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