Consider This from NPR - Biden On The Picket Line

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

President Biden made history on Tuesday when he joined members of the United Auto Workers union on a picket line outside Detroit as they strike for better pay and benefits from the Big Three automakers.Biden is walking a political tightrope. He wants a better contract for workers–and to win union members' votes in battleground states. He also wants to support carmakers as they transition to a future of electric vehicles.NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Micheline Maynard, the author of The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market, to understand how profitable the big carmakers are right now. And NPR's Michel Martin speaks with historian Jefferson Cowie about the unprecedented nature of Biden walking the picket lines.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu forward. Presidents have visited war zones. I'm really pleased to be with the 10th Mountain Division. Presidents have visited war zones. I'm really pleased to be with the 10th Mountain Division. They've stopped by factories. I have just been on an incredibly impressive tour of this facility.

Commencement stages. President Clinton, it is our great honor and privilege to welcome you to the University of Chicago campus. Major League Baseball diamonds. For tonight's ceremonial first pitch, and please welcome the President of the United States. But no U.S. President, as far as we can tell, has ever stood on a union picket line. I'm Mark Savant, the U.A. Deputy Pick union picket line. Until now. On Tuesday, President Biden joined members of the United Auto Workers as they strike for better pay and benefits from the big three automakers. That's Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. As he walked the picket line outside a GM facility in Michigan, Biden was also walking a political tightrope. He wants a better contract for workers.

He also wants to support car makers as they transition to a future of electric vehicles. Here he is a year ago. The auto companies like Ford, GM, Stellantis, I still have, I still am inclined to say that other word, Chrysler. My dad worked for them for a while. Are all our partners here. They made commitments. We're having to invest billions of dollars in themselves to go electric. The companies say agreeing to the union's demands would hurt their ability to make that transition. On the picket line, Biden framed the negotiations as a matter of fairness. The union took pay freezes and gave big concessions on benefits when the auto companies were struggling during the Great Recession.

Made a lot of sacrifices, gave up a lot, and the companies were in trouble. But now they're doing incredibly well. And guess what? You should be doing incredibly well too. Consider this. Biden says the auto industry is riding high and workers deserve a cut. Well, look at how the big three are actually faring right now and what it means when a president stands side by side with striking workers. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Tuesday, September 26th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally,

and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. IU makes bold investments in the future of bioscience and cybersecurity, cultivates visionary work in the arts and humanities, and prepares students to become global citizens by teaching more languages than any other university in the country. Indiana University. Nine campuses. One purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. This message comes from NBC News. Did you know you can listen to Meet the Press as a podcast? Join moderator Kristen Welker for breaking political news, in-depth analysis, and interviews with leaders and newsmakers. Search for Meet the Press and

follow now. It's Consider This from NPR. On the picket line with Biden, United Auto Workers President Sean Fain recalled the history of the GM plant in Willow Run. This was part of the arsenal of democracy during World War II. It's where they built the B-24 Liberator bomber. Today, he said the union was fighting a different enemy. It's corporate greed. That is a central disagreement in these talks. The union points to the automakers' big profits.

The automakers say those numbers disguise small margins, and they don't account for the expensive transition to electric vehicles that looms large. For a clearer picture of how the big three are doing, I spoke to journalist Micheline Maynard, who covers the industry from Michigan. Micheline Maynard, welcome. Mary Louise, I'm happy to be here. So let's start just with the big picture with profits, because United Auto Workers, the union, likes to point out that profits for the big three have soared, even as wages for workers have stagnated. And they're right. Gross profits for the big three have soared, even as wages for workers have stagnated. And they're right.

Gross profits for the big three have been way up since the last union contract was signed. I'm seeing 50% up for GM, more than 30% up for Ford. Explain why. Why are profits up so much? There are a couple of factors here. One is that the car companies are selling an enormous number of pickup trucks and SUVs. I was looking at some market share numbers, and those vehicles now make up 80% of car sales. Back about 20 years ago, it was 50-50. So 50% cars, 50% trucks, now it's 80-20. Those great big vehicles make a lot of

money for the car makers. The average price of a vehicle is now about $48,000, which just, you know, that's probably what our parents paid for houses and maybe even less than that. So car prices are up, profits are up. And, you know, on the surface, it does very much look like the car companies can afford to give the union the raises that they want. Just before I move on from these insane sounding profits, how surprising is it, given it was not so many years ago that there were all these predictions for the death of the American car industry, the death of Detroit?

Well, we did see two of the car makers go into bankruptcy in 2009, and Ford Motor Company had to basically mortgage everything that it owned. But one of the things that happened when we did the bailouts was that they took away a lot of the debt that those companies had. So the car companies are leaner, and when you're leaner, you can make more money. So the big disruptor lurking in the background of all this is, of course, the push for electric vehicles. And I want to look at this from both sides. First, from the automaker's side, we hear a lot about costs. How much is this going to cost the big three? Does it also present opportunity for higher profits?

The whole electric vehicle push is a global push. And I have seen numbers that this will be a trillion dollars, trillion with a T type of investment for all the car makers around the world. In the United States, we're seeing numbers in the billions. It will be expensive. It's expensive to develop vehicles anyway, but these vehicles will be expensive. It's expensive to develop vehicles anyway, but these vehicles will be expensive to develop because one of the rules of thumb in the auto industry is that you introduce a new vehicle and it costs at least a billion dollars to develop a new vehicle, if not more. And you're not going to recover that for the first few years that the vehicle is on sale. So with electric vehicles, there's a huge hurdle because a lot of people are still not ready to buy a vehicle that plugs into an outlet.

They're not sure that they'll be able to charge it up. They're not sure they're going to be able to drive up north to their cabin, which is a real concern here in Michigan. So a lot of people go up to the upper peninsula. You're speaking to how many things are in play in that decision to buy a car, which of course feeds into the bottom line for the auto industry. I want to ask about the other side of the table, the union's take on the transition to EVs. What are they demanding as their bosses, as the automakers transition to electric vehicles, which, by the way, will require fewer people to manufacture? Exactly, because you don't put engines in electric vehicles. You put batteries in electric vehicles and you don't put the batteries together yourself on the assembly line. They come in on a truck and they're dropped into the vehicle.

So there will, I am sure there will be job losses. And I think what the UAW is trying to do is make sure that the people who are working now are getting paid more and that they get better benefits. And this other issue that people might hear is about COLA, which is not something you drink. It's a cost of living allowance. When the bankruptcies took place, UAW contracts were renegotiated and COLA went away. It had been part of union contracts for years. So Sean Fain is saying, I want COLA back. I want my workers protected from inflation because inflation has been a real issue over the last few years. And if you're only making $14 an hour and you get hit with inflation, I've heard of UAW members who are taking second jobs and even third jobs to be able to support their families. One more thing, and this is big picture, but you nodded to the fact that the auto industry is globalized.

Manufacturers can look overseas for cheap labor. Many companies here in the U.S. are producing cars with non-union workers. How much leverage do these workers ultimately have? There are so many fewer workers now than there once were. If you look at General Motors years ago, they had 400,000 workers. They basically have less than a quarter of that now. So the strikes are hurting the car companies, but you don't have the breadth of workers that you once did. So I think they have leverage.

But in the long term, you know, there's other competition and there's other places to go. And I think what Sean Fain is trying to do is get as much for his workers now, knowing that, you know, there might be some dark days ahead. That was journalist Micheline Maynard, author of The End of Detroit, How the Big Three Lost lost their grip on the American car market. So that's the economic context of the United Auto Workers strike. Let's talk about the political backdrop. As we mentioned, Biden on Tuesday walked the picket line, but he's not the only one trying to win support from auto workers. Former President Donald Trump is planning his own visit to Michigan. He will address workers at an auto parts supplier on Wednesday. To make sense of this moment, we're going to hear from someone with a long view on the labor movement.

Jefferson Cowie, a professor of American history at Vanderbilt University, spoke with my colleague Michelle Martin. Well, this is unprecedented territory. We've never seen a sitting president go to a picket line. And the fact that it's up against a completely different view of what working class politics should be, that of Donald Trump is absolutely fascinating. I think it's a very rich and juicy moment in working class politics. So how do you understand President Trump's decision to go to Michigan also? Well, Michigan is a key swing state for him. Of course, he won it once and barely lost it another time.

So making inroads into that sort of typical sort of stronghold of the United Auto Workers is really important to him. Whether he'll be able to do it this time, I don't know. Well, he did. I mean, in 2016, I think the data shows that he did appeal to blue-collar workers opposing trade deals, promising to bring back American jobs. He, you know, he lobbed tariffs against China, which unions appreciated, but he also pursued policies that were not union-friendly. And, you know, worth noting that his cabinet was like the most, the richest cabinet sort of in terms of personal wealth in history. So could he convince rank and file workers that he stands with them and actually cut into the, what Biden is trying to do?

Of course he can. The question is, can he do it big enough? And I think this is a battle kind of the hearts and minds of especially white working class voters. I mean, whether they can be won over over race and nationalism and sort of the usual Trumpian rhetoric or whether we'll see a shift back toward the economic interest, the sort of Rooseveltian New Deal vision that Biden has, I think is really the centerpiece of this drama. And for Biden to get out there, who has been absolutely clear about his politics on labor, is really, really exciting. I think in some ways it's more typical for Trump to try this than it is for a sitting president. It's a place where candidates go. Candidates always go to picket lines. Presidents never go to picket lines.

So President Biden won the UAW's endorsement in 2020. The union has yet to back a candidate for 2024. Should President Biden and, say, the Democrats more broadly be worried about this? No. It's too early. And, you know, Sean Fenn has made it clear he's ready for their support to be earned, in his words. And I think that Biden is doing it very much right now. And he said, the president of the United Auto Workers said, if you want to support us, come walk the picket line.

That's where the rubber meets the road for us. And that is exactly what Joe Biden is doing in this rather shocking move. So, but, you know, memories can be short. Do you think that these trips this week will make any difference next year when voters are actually going to vote? I think that's a really interesting question. The real issue, I think, is whether this is the beginning of a rolling shift that might culminate in a year from now in a kind of more economic agenda for the American working class, which we haven't really seen for quite a long time. Labor's vote has been presumed by the Democrats, but there hasn't always been that much of a payoff. In this particular instance, we might be seeing much more of a shift

towards an economic interest within the Democratic Party and within the working class. And I think that would be an exciting historical move back to kind of sort of where we were before the 1970s. Jefferson Cowie of Vanderbilt University speaking with my colleague Michelle Martin. And we'll note that Cowie's most recent book, Freedom's Dominion, won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in history. The team that brings you Consider This is also behind All Things Considered, our afternoon news show. It's a mix of the deep dives you get here, along with more stories you'll want to hear. Visit npr.org slash allthingsconsidered to stream it live every afternoon. It's Consider This. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education,

democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org.