President Joe Biden on Thursday emphasized his support for unions during a trip to Illinois and celebrated the reopening of a Stellantis plant after tentative deals were recently struck between the United Auto Workers and three major U.S. automakers following a strike that lasted weeks.
Biden also met with United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, as well as union members in his visit to the city of Belvidere, northwest of Chicago.
“I want to thank you for your commitment to the solidarity, for exercising your right to bargain collectively,” Biden said in remarks delivered to an audience of union members. “You made this happen.”
The president told the crowd that they are changing “the face of the country economically” with their efforts.
Ronald Reagan touted himself as a Union President [Screen Actors Guild] in 1980. One of his first acts as President was the destroy a Union.
Fun fact or implication?
PATCO, the air traffic controllers Union.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_(1968)
Uncertain.
One of Biden’s campaign promises was student loan forgiveness, and while we can thank Republicans for gutting it in its tracks, pursuit of it didn’t really happen until it was advantageous with election season.
Likewise, Biden was initially against the rail strike, but seeing as unions have become a voter issue, it’s important to clean that image.
I’m glad Biden is supporting the Auto workers strike. But I want to see that support continue after it’s politically advantageous before I conclude he’s had a change of heart.
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,” Russo said. “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.
This was my understanding as well.
While I appreciate the change in tune, I’m certainly not taking this at face value after the rail strike.
He’s been supportive of this strike from the beginning and even became the first president to join a picket line when it started in September.
And how does that help the rail workers?
The rail workers appear to be helping themselves: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/10/1155763336/freight-rail-workers-union-paid-sick-leave-bernie-sanders-csx
At almost a year later.
The rail workers were able to get a small fraction of the concessions that they were owed months after the fact and with hugely diminished future bargaining power, thanks in large part to Biden crushing the strike. Anyone who says he is a union supporter is either ignorant or lying
Yeah I mean that’s just virtue signaling
