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.

  • holiday@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A far cry from just 10 months ago when he blew up the railway picket line.

    • Sorchist@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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.”

      • Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • harpuajim@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I saw that story from a distance but didn’t really follow it. How did Biden negatively impact the workers striking against the railroads?

      • mpa92643@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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

        • CluelessLemmyng@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          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.”

          • mpa92643@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • VentraSqwal@links.dartboard.social
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              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.

          • antizero99@lemmynsfw.com
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            1 year ago

            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.

      • odium@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        By saying that he would intervene with the national guard if railway workers actually striked.

          • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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            1 year ago

            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.

              • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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                1 year ago

                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.

      • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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        1 year ago

        He actively pushed for, and passed, legislation that effectively forbade rail workers from picketing

    • oatscoop@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      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.