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.
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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