Democrats join UAW picketers in Detroit
DETROIT » The Democratic presidential candidates have been chasing labor support all summer, appearing at small union halls and large conferences, and tweeting support for workers at companies like Amazon and Walmart.
But now, as the United Automobile Workers, one of the nation’s largest unions, stages a strike that has even drawn words of support from President Donald Trump, Democrats are seizing the moment to align themselves with workers in public and dramatic ways.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts walked the picket line Sunday alongside striking General Motors workers at an assembly plant in Detroit. Not to be outdone, former Vice President Joe Biden appeared at a GM assembly plant in Kansas City, Kansas.
The picket line visits of two of the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination, with the third, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, planning to join striking workers in Detroit on Wednesday, illustrated the importance to Democrats of winning the support of rank-and-file union members, including those who voted for Trump in 2016.
Taking her message of fighting inequality to Michigan for the fourth time since June, Warren joined a scrum of striking autoworkers, carrying a blue and white “U.A.W. on Strike” sign. As they crisscrossed the entrance to the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant, where Cadillacs and Chevrolets are built, the workers chanted, “We are the union, the mighty, mighty union. U.A.W. stand strong.”
Warren criticized GM for closing plants while making billions of dollars in profits.
“GM is demonstrating that it has no loyalty to the workers of America or the people of America,” she said. “Their only loyalty is to their own bottom line. And if they can save a nickel by moving a job to Mexico or to Asia or to anywhere else on this planet, they will do it.”
“Everybody deserves a living wage in this country,” she said. “Let’s be clear, unions built America’s middle class and unions will rebuild America’s middle class.”
UAW leaders in Detroit voted unanimously a week ago to authorize the strike, the union’s first such walkout since 2007. The union is pushing GM to raise wages, reopen some plants and add jobs at others, and narrow the pay gap between new hires and veteran workers. Nearly 50,000 members have joined picket lines at factories across the South and the Midwest.
Every major Democratic presidential candidate has expressed support for the striking workers, and several have visited picket lines to appeal to union members who may have switched their support to Trump. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota joined one in Detroit, while Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio traveled to several in his home state and in Flint, Michigan.
Addressing the striking UAW workers in Kansas City on Sunday afternoon, Biden wore a red T-shirt in solidarity. He referenced the bailout of General Motors during the Obama administration, telling the crowd, “We didn’t bail out GM, UAW bailed out GM.” He went on to lament the high pay of executives at the company and the lack of equitable benefits for workers, and he encouraged the striking workers, acknowledging, “you’re making a hell of a sacrifice.”
“There’s only one reason we have a middle class, and it’s spelled ‘U-N-I-O-N,’ “he said. The crowd cheered.
Autoworker support for the Democratic Party has eroded slightly in recent years, and about 30% of the union’s rank and file were estimated to have voted for Trump in 2016, slightly more than the share who voted for the two previous Republican presidential nominees.
The departure of those voters from the Democratic Party, even as the union had officially endorsed Hillary Clinton, was particularly critical to Trump in Michigan, where he won by the thinnest of margins less than 11,000 votes to capture the state’s 16 electoral votes.
Nearly three years later, it is unclear how many of those union workers continue to back the president. The economy has generally remained strong here, with unemployment near a 20year low.