President Biden is sending a team from the White House with the aim of helping resolve the strike by the nation’s largest auto union, with the Big Three automakers planning to be in Detroit to support negotiations “early in the week.”
White House adviser Gene Sperling and acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su traveled to Detroit with the aim of reaching an agreement to end the strike initiated by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, which began on Friday.
Sperling, who has been actively involved in key issues related to the union and the auto companies, has coordinated efforts with Su.
A government official said: “Both Sperling and Acting Secretary Su are in telephone contact with the parties, as they have been for weeks, with the intention of being there early in the week. The Administration is pleased that the parties continue to meet as they were before the contract expired.”
President Biden has sent a White House team to Detroit to help resolve the strike involving the United Auto Workers union and the Big Three automakers
United Auto Workers member Brian Rooster Heppner raises his fist as he cheers during a rally in Detroit on Friday
Members of the United Auto Workers march through downtown Detroit on Friday. The UAW carries out a strike against Ford, Stellantis and General Motors
Su and Sperling’s goal is not to act as a mediator or intervene directly, but rather to provide support in a way that the negotiating parties find constructive, the official said.
The union representing employees of General Motors, Ford and Stellantis is demanding a 40 percent pay increase for its employees. The strike is limited for now to three assembly plants: a GM plant in Wentzville, Missouri, a Ford plant near Detroit, and a Jeep plant run by Stellantis in Toledo, Ohio.
The head of the United Auto Workers warned Sunday that a historic strike at the three largest automakers will expand if the companies do not increase their wage offers during ongoing negotiations.
Stellantis, one of the three, had offered its employees a so-called “very competitive” pay increase of 21 percent over four years, but UAW President Shawn Fain called that “an absolute no-go.”
Labor Secretary Julie Su is part of a White House delegation sent to Detroit to resolve the strikes
UAW Local 685 president Garry Quirk said Biden had not done enough to prevent a strike, saying, ‘I don’t know what he did’
As part of its demands, the UAW wants to represent workers at battery plants, which would cause a ripple effect in an industry that has seen supply chains upended by technological changes
“If we don’t get better deals and meet members’ needs, we’re going to amplify this even further,” Fain told the CBS News talk show “Face the Nation,” saying General Motors, Ford and Stellantis have “no excuse ‘ to not resolve salary disputes, given their huge profits in recent years.
‘We are prepared to do what we have to do. The membership is done, the membership is fed up.”
The UAW is demanding better conditions for its workers across the board, including a 40 percent pay increase over the next four-year contract. All three companies have offered pay increases of about 20 percent.
A UAW source confirmed the union held talks with General Motors on Sunday, the third day of the strike, but provided no further details.
The standoff has already fueled a bitter debate in Washington over President Joe Biden’s economic policies ahead of the 2024 election — and whether he has done enough to avert or resolve the car dispute.
Biden, the self-described “most pro-union president in American history,” spoke to UAW boss Shawn Fain and the three car company CEOs in a futile last-ditch effort to avoid a strike
Jim Farley, president and CEO of Ford Motor Company, speaks to reporters about the UAW contract talks at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit last week
Only 12,700 of the union’s 150,000 workers are currently on strike, but Fain’s comments pointed to the possibility of much broader action, with reverberations across the economy.
On Friday, President Biden expressed hope that the UAW and the Big Three automakers would return to the negotiating table.
He acknowledged the frustration among workers, stressing that while car companies reported “record profits”, the profits had not been passed on to the workforce.
Biden said the profits “were not, in my opinion, fairly shared with those workers.
‘Let’s be clear: no one wants a strike. But I respect workers’ right to exercise their options under the collective bargaining system,” he said at the White House.
The strike poses a unique challenge for the president, who has previously described himself as “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.”
Sens. Bernie Sanders and Fain (left) speak at a rally in support of United Auto Workers members as they attack the Big Three automakers in Detroit on Friday
Members of the UAW union march through the streets of downtown Detroit after a rally on the first day of the UAW strike in Detroit
The Democrats have lined up firmly behind the autoworkers.
“The president has made it clear which side he is on in this fight,” liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders said on CNN, adding that Biden had repeatedly said “that a strong labor movement benefits us all.”
On social media, Vice President Kamala Harris said she agreed that “a new contract should promote good middle-class jobs — and ensure the UAW remains central to our auto economy.”
Historically, the UAW has backed Democratic candidates like Biden, but former President Donald Trump received significant support from auto sector workers.
Trump, who has a resounding lead in the polls over other Republican presidential candidates, has criticized the union’s leadership and Biden’s focus on promoting electric vehicle production.
“The auto workers are not going to have any jobs… because all these cars are going to be made in China – the electric cars are automatically going to be made in China,” Trump said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s. ‘Meet the press.
Before the strike was officially declared, UAW President Shawn Fain had pointed out that a strike would force Biden and other politicians to take sides in the organized labor dispute.
Midnight Friday, about 13,000 UAW members began strikes at several locations, including a General Motors plant in Missouri, a Stellantis facility in Ohio and a Ford assembly plant in Michigan.
On Friday, Ford said it would lay off 600 workers at a Michigan plant indefinitely due to the impact of the strike at the plant, which affected the Bronco, and GM told some 2,000 workers at a Kansas auto plant that their plant would likely be shut down. Closed. dropped Monday or Tuesday due to a lack of parts following the strike at a GM plant in Missouri.
If all UAW members were to strike, the union’s strike fund would be sufficient to provide approximately eleven weeks of strike pay.