The United Auto Staff has endorsed President Joe Biden’s bid for reelection in 2024. “Joe Biden has earned it,” stated union president Shawn Fain on Jan. 24 as he introduced the union’s choice to again the incumbent candidate.
The Dialog U.S. requested Marick Masters, a Wayne State College scholar of labor, politics and enterprise points, to clarify why the UAW waited till now to endorse Biden and why this endorsement issues.
Why is the UAW endorsement important?
The UAW’s endorsement gives symbolic and substantive assist for the president.
Symbolically, it shores up Biden’s backing by organized labor – a vital constituency in an election 12 months that guarantees a decent rematch between him and former President Donald Trump.
Current nationwide polls have leaned a minimum of barely in Trump’s favor, which implies that Biden must mobilize voters in key battleground states like Michigan – the place the biggest variety of the UAW’s 400,000 lively and 580,000 retired members reside – to win reelection.
Substantively, the endorsement clears the way in which for the deployment of the political muscle of this union to assist get out the vote for Biden in November. Traditionally, the United Auto Staff has tried to assist its members and the general public basically turn out to be effectively knowledgeable about politics and elections and sought to mobilize voters for the candidates it endorses.
Though the ranks of organized labor within the U.S., together with the UAW, have usually declined considerably since their heyday within the Fifties, the United Auto Staff has a formidable community in battleground states like Michigan, the place roughly 130,000 of its members reside. Biden gained Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020, whereas Hillary Clinton misplaced it by simply 11,600 votes in 2016.
Unions made about US$27.5 million in contributions to Biden’s 2020 marketing campaign. Whereas nominally a major quantity, it pales compared to the quantity that companies contributed. Biden’s 2020 bid was the first ever to attract greater than $1 billion from donors.
What led to the delay in endorsing?
Somewhat than make an early endorsement of President Biden, in 2023 the United Auto Staff as a substitute voiced dissatisfaction with the administration’s coverage of accelerating the transition to electrical automobiles.
From the union’s perspective, the Biden administration had not given labor rights enough safety because the Massive Three automakers shaped joint ventures with foreign-based producers of batteries to facilitate the business’s transition to producing much more electrical automobiles.
Because the union ready for its contract negotiations with Basic Motors, Ford and Stellantis – the worldwide firm that producers Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep automobiles within the U.S. – the UAW hoped to exert no matter affect it might over lawmakers and the businesses to open the joint ventures to union illustration.
However Fain made it abundantly clear on the time, as he has carried out many times, that Trump was not a viable different. He has repeatedly stated that Trump’s election in 2024 can be “a catastrophe.”
And to make certain, the UAW didn’t endorse Biden’s 2020 candidacy till April 21 of that 12 months. It moved quicker this time.
How did UAW members vote in 2016 and 2020?
Regardless of widespread union endorsements of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, a major share of union members solid their ballots for Donald Trump in each elections.
In 2016, 38% of union members voted for Trump in contrast with 58% for Clinton, based on College of Michigan researchers. In 2020, 40% of voters in union households voted for Trump in contrast with 56% for Biden.
That’s in step with the UAW’s partisan breakdown in prior elections. About 60% of UAW members and retirees have traditionally voted for Democratic Celebration candidates, based on Brian Rothenberg, a former union spokesman.
In shut races, assist from the United Auto Staff and the remainder of organized labor might show decisive, however that the union’s membership has fallen from 1.5 million within the late Seventies to lower than 400,000 right this moment, and that general the union membership price within the U.S. workforce has shrunk to 10%.
And in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, which have quite a few union members, the United Auto Staff’ efforts on behalf of presidential candidates might tip the steadiness. Unions had roughly 564,000 members in Michigan in 2023, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Was there an opportunity that the UAW might have backed Trump?
No probability in any respect.
The United Auto Staff would have condemned itself throughout the Democratic Celebration and progressive circles if it had damaged with custom and never endorsed the occasion’s candidate. Endorsing Trump would have forfeited the UAW’s leverage to affect the Biden administration’s insurance policies relating to the transition to automobile electrification.
“Donald Trump is a billionaire, and that’s who he represents,” Fain declared earlier than making the union’s endorsement. “If Donald Trump ever labored in an auto plant, he wouldn’t be a UAW member, he’d be an organization man attempting to squeeze the American employee. Donald Trump stands towards the whole lot we stand for as a union, as a society.”
I consider that endorsing Trump would even have created an irreconcilable rift within the union itself with dangerous fallout. And it might have alienated Biden, who confirmed his assist for the union’s strikers in September 2023 by standing with them on the picket line – a primary for any sitting president.
