Biden, UAW’s Fain forge an uneasy alliance amid labor turmoil
As President Joe Biden stood on a Michigan picket line recently, wearing a United Auto Workers hat and speaking through a bullhorn, he used his brief remarks to encourage union members to “stick with it” and “get back what we lost.”
He then handed the bullhorn to United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, who proceeded to deliver a seven-minute stemwinder, casting the strike as emblematic of a broader war between the rich and the poor and blasting the “billionaire class” of besuited executives as the source of many of the nation’s problems.
“Today, the enemy isn’t some foreign country miles away,” Mr. Fain said. “It’s right here in our own area. It’s corporate greed.”
The forces that brought each man to that moment — the first visit to a picket line by a sitting president — were reflected in their different tones before the striking workers. Those conflicting styles have become pivotal as the at-times tense relationship they have forged over the past six months now holds outsize sway over the nation’s economic and political futures.
“This strike has unexpectedly become a symbol of grievances that working Americans have more broadly,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and a former autoworker. “There’s a range of working Americans that feel an immediate distaste of growing inequality, because it reflects their inability to have a secure or decent life. And the president and Shawn Fain are each dealing with that.”
It’s not just the UAW strike. Labor unrest is rippling through American society in a way unseen for decades. More than 75,000 health workers at Kaiser Permanente are poised to walk off the job. Las Vegas hospitality workers have voted to authorize a strike against 22 casino resorts. A Hollywood writers strike recently ended after five months, and an actors strike continues. Companies like Starbucks and Amazon face persistent worker agitation.
But the auto industry, the longtime heart of American manufacturing, carries special symbolism. It contributes about 3% of the nation’s gross domestic product and involves a pivotal slice of the electorate that could determine the 2024 presidential election. Fain, like his forebear Walter Reuther, is rapidly coming to symbolize American labor, and that shines a stark spotlight on his relationship with Mr. Biden.
While Mr. Biden campaigns on the idea that he has taken historic action to address inequality and boost the middle class, Mr. Fain has organized the strike around the sentiment that workers are continuing to fall behind in Mr. Biden’s America. He has pointedly withheld the UAW’s endorsement of Mr. Biden’s reelection, in part over the president’s electric vehicle policy, while also stiff-arming former president Donald Trump, who leads the polls in the Republican nomination contest.
Mr. Fain’s hard-charging approach has yielded results, his allies say, pointing to Mr. Biden’s decision to break with precedent and visit a picket line and concessions won from the Big Three automakers thus far. They say he has channeled the broader frustration of workers across the economy, as polls suggest rising support for the autoworkers, and unions more generally.
As Mr. Fain weighs how far to push in a strike that is entering its third week, expanding to include more factories and increasingly featuring accusations of violence from both sides, his relationship with Mr. Biden is critical. And the president, who just escaped one economic threat when Congress barely averted a government shutdown, can ill afford another in the form of a prolonged strike.
White House officials concede the relationship got off to a rough start, though they say it has improved in recent weeks. Mr. Fain spoke positively of the president during their joint appearance on the picket line, and the pair had a cordial conversation in the presidential limousine en route to the event, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
But it hasn’t always been smooth. In June, Mr. Fain accused Mr. Biden’s administration of “facilitating this corporate greed.” At one point he blasted Biden’s marquee legislation for having “no commitment to workers.” More recently, he accused the White House of being “afraid” of a UAW strike.
That is hardly typical language for union leaders, most of whom are close with the Democratic establishment. White House officials cite Mr. Biden’s willingness to shrug off these slights as one reason the 55-year-old electrician and 80-year-old politician have been able to project more unity in recent days.
Mr. Fain was not well-known by Mr. Biden or his aides before his upstart victory in the UAW’s first-ever direct election in March. He campaigned on a pledge to take a tougher line than his predecessors with the auto companies, especially as high-stakes contract talks approached with Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.
In late April, Mr. Fain traveled to Washington to gather support for the looming showdown, meeting with Sen. Bernie Sanders, IVt., and other lawmakers. He also met with policy officials in the White House, though not with Mr. Biden’s top political appointees, according to a White House official.
That same week, Mr. Biden officially launched his re-election bid. One of his early goals was securing as many endorsements as possible, notably from unions.
But days after Mr. Fain’s visit to the White House, he released a memo saying the UAW was withholding its endorsement because of the administration’s push to boost the production of electric vehicles. EVs require fewer workers to build than gasoline-powered cars, and some battery facilities offer lower pay and benefits than traditional auto plants.
“The federal government is pouring billions into the electric vehicle transition, with no strings attached and no commitment to workers,” Mr. Fain wrote. “We want to see national leadership have our back on this before we make any commitments.”
Some Biden aides were taken aback by Mr. Fain’s blunt tone and worried about the potential damage to Mr. Biden, who regularly calls himself the most prounion figure ever to sit in the Oval Office.
Relations became even more strained after the Biden administration announced a loan of up to $9.2 billion for a joint venture between Ford and South Korea’s SK for the construction of three battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky, states that union leaders considered hostile. The loan brought to the fore the unease many autoworkers felt about Mr. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a 2022 law that provides taxpayer incentives to bolster the production of EVs in the United States.
While Mr. Biden had sought to include labor protections in the legislation, the final package did not require companies receiving taxpayer funds to hire union workers or pay competitive wages.