Up First from NPR - Lee Storm Preparations, UAW Strike Continues, Ukraine Latest

Episode Date: September 16, 2023

People in New England prepare as post-tropical cyclone Lee bears down on the region. The United Auto Workers union is still on strike, demanding higher wages and better benefits for new employees. Ukraine hasn't taken back as much land as it wanted since the start of its offensive in June.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Lee is no longer a hurricane. It's a post-tropical cyclone with high winds and rain. People in New England and Atlantic Canada are hunkering down, waiting for the storm to pass. I'm Scott Simon. I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is Up First from NPR News. The United Auto Workers Union is doubling down. They're still on strike. They want higher wages and better benefits. One of our workers would have to work 400 years to make what a CEO makes in one year. But will those CEOs budge?

Ukraine hasn't taken back as much territory as it wanted, and winter is coming. So where does that leave their offensive? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your weekend. Now Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to Our change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today.

It was big. It was scary as it made its way up the Atlantic as a Category 5 hurricane. But now forecasters say Lee has weakened and is more like a nor'easter. It's been downgraded to post-tropical storm strength. It's been pushing into the Gulf of Maine with 80-mile-an-hour winds, but is expected to weaken more as it passes over colder water in the Gulf. Carol Bousquet of Maine Public Radio has been watching and joins us now from Portland. Carol, thanks for being with us. You're welcome, Scott. And this is still a massive storm. It's expected to make landfall in Nova Scotia later today. What's Maine expecting? Well, the wind is really picking up at this point, and that's the big concern for most of the state.

This is still a massive storm with a 300-mile-long wind field capable of bringing down trees weakened by heavy summer rains onto power lines. Down east Maine, which is the most northern and eastern tip of Maine on the Atlantic, will get the brunt of Lee's impacts later today with up to four inches of heavy rain and waves of 15 to 20 feet that will bring a storm surge and flooding. How have they been trying to get ready for it in some of the coastal communities? Well, harbormasters and fishermen up and down the coast have been pulling boats out of the water all week and bringing them to safe harbor. Emergency management directors in coastal towns have insured public works departments

and first responders are ready 24-7 to clear roads and open shelters. Eastport, an island with a deep port and bustling fishing community, is about as down east as you can get up here in Maine. Its port authority has packed all of its fishing vessels into the Eastport Breakwater, which is a concrete pier that can provide safe harbor. The executive director there, Chris Gardner, says mariners here are used to nor'easters, not tropical storms with winds that can change on a dime. We have two large piers on opposing sides of our island. So we watch the weather, we see where the prevailing winds are going to be,

and we move assets around as needed to kind of stay out of the prevailing wind. Now the interesting thing about this storm is the fact that as it goes over us, those wind directions may change. So if there is a uniqueness to this, it is that. What are residents being told to do, Carol? Residents have been advised to have adequate food, water, and medicine on hand, charge their phones, and stay put. They should know two evacuation routes inland, and generators should be run 15 feet from their homes and not in enclosed areas. They are planning creative ways to ride out Lee today. One family says it will play Scrabble with flashlights if they lose power. Another woman plans to cook jambalaya if she has power.

The Inn on Great Diamond Island in Casco Bay is planning a storm party with guests that are staying and riding out the storm. Well, Maine is so famed for its jambalaya. What's been put into place in emergency assets by the state? The State Emergency Management Agency has its Emergency Operations Center running all weekend and will coordinate with county and local EMAs on storm response. Utilities have brought in hundreds of crews from other New England states and Canada to handle outages. And Governor Janet Mills took the unusual step of asking President Biden for a preemptive disaster declaration, which he did grant, that will

also make FEMA resources available to help the state respond and recover. Carol Bousquet from Maine Public, thanks so much. You're welcome. The United Auto Workers are testing their strength with a strike. That union used to be a titan. Today it's a lot smaller and so are the perks of membership. But the union wants to change that. And Paris Camila Domenowski joins us.

Camila, thanks for being with us. Happy to be here, Scott. What's it been like? What have you seen? Yeah, I mean, I talked to executives at the Detroit Auto Show. I went out and spoke to people on picket lines and pitch blackness. There was one image from this week that I'll never forget. There were two events right next to each other in downtown Detroit last night. One was a big UAW rally. Bernie Sanders spoke huge emphasis on the vast and growing gulf between

the haves and the have-nots in America. And then literally next door, Scott, there was a glitzy charity event at the auto show, $400 a head for a ticket. People dressed to the nines in floor-length gowns with drinks walking around the cars. And right outside, red t-shirted people in the streets with picket signs, just separated by some glass and some mounted police officers. UAW last went on strike in 2019. What do you see that's different this time? A lot of things are different. The union leadership is different. They're being unusually transparent. They're having updates about the talks back and forth. It's unusual to strike all three companies at once.

The union's never done that. It's also unusual to start with just a few plants and then threaten to grow over time, which is how they're doing these strikes. All of that is different. More fundamentally, the union is asking for a lot more in these talks with these strikes than they have in any recent negotiations. Such as what? Well, there's more pay, obviously, but also pensions, cost of living adjustments, health care for retirees, pay for workers at shuttered plants. And those are things that the union gave up, things the union used to have but gave back to the company in the Great Recession, things that the car companies say are way too expensive to

give back. Brendan Bell was on the picket line this week. He's only actually worked at Ford for three years, so he wasn't around for the Great Recession, but all these workers know this history. They gave up wages. They gave up their retirement funds. They gave a lot to the company because the company was in a bad situation. They were facing bankruptcy. And that stuff they gave up, they can still see it around them. Justin Lowe works at that same plant. I come from a long line of family that's been in the UAW and they have pensions and stuff like that. And it's just like kind of sucks like, well, because you came later, you just don't get it. So I would really like to see the pension back.

I heard a variation of that from so many people. What made them decide that now is the time to make the big push? Yeah, well, there is the new leadership. There's also the huge profits that companies have. The automakers have done great the last few years. So there's money on the table. Inflation have done great the last few years. So there's money on the table. Inflation has workers ready to push for more. You know, they're not happy with the offer of a 10, 15, even a 20% raise. It's not as good as it would have sounded, you know,

four years ago. There's also a lot of support for unions right now from the public, from the Biden administration, and other unions have had some big wins, which is sort of motivating or inspiring for unions. So overall, the UAW sees this as an opportunity, maybe a unique one, to secure some gains into the future. What could be ahead? Well, it's unpredictable. There's real frustration on both sides. And I should mention the car companies are frustrated with the union. They say they're not being reasonable, not answering their offers. President Biden says he's sending two key members of his administration to help with negotiations. And there is the threat that

additional plants could close at any time. We don't know where, we don't know when. The union strategy here is to be unpredictable. And Paris Camilla Dominovsky in Detroit, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. When Ukraine launched a major military offensive in June, expectations ran high. But Ukrainian forces have made only limited advances against Russian forces and winter's on the horizon. NPR's Greg Myrie is with us now to take stock of the Ukrainian effort. Hi, Greg. Hi, Ayesha. So, Greg, you've reported extensively from Ukraine. What are Ukraine's

prospects for taking back more territory before weather turns bad? Well, it's certainly possible, but if Ukraine is going to make a major breakthrough before the winter sets in, it needs to happen fairly soon. The top U.S. general, Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, addressed this question recently in an interview with the BBC. The Ukrainians are still plugging away with steady progress, and there's still a reasonable amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days worth of fighting weather left. The Ukrainian forces are trying to advance on three separate fronts in the south and east, and they've moved forward several miles in several months of heavy fighting. But they're still well short of their own stated goal, which is to push about 50 miles to the southeast coast and split the Russian forces in two, leaving them much more vulnerable. So far, the Russians remain deeply entrenched and are really contesting every bit of territory. So, I mean, if the front lines don't change, you know, in the next few weeks, like, does that mean that we're looking at a

stalemate over the winter? That's certainly a possibility, Aisha. And to take a step back, Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February of last year, and lots of territory changed hands last year. But since the beginning of this year, very little territory has changed hands. So it does raise the question of what comes next or even how the war might end. And I spoke about this with Charles Kupchan. He's a former diplomat and national security official. When this offensive reaches its limits, which it will probably do in a couple of months when it gets muddy, what do we do then? Ukraine is suffering terrible loss of life.

And as a consequence, one has to ask, might Ukraine be better off trying to get a ceasefire and beginning the process of rebuilding? So Kupchuk was part of a small, unofficial group that met quietly this year with Russian officials. And he's faced considerable pushback for raising the possibility of a ceasefire or a permanent agreement at a time when the U.S. and Ukrainian governments are still very much focused on the battlefield. Is there a reason to believe that either the Ukrainians or the Russians are even interested in negotiations? We're really not seeing that. President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader who will be in the U.S. this week at the United

Nations, says it's unrealistic to negotiate with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. He says Ukraine's goal is to reclaim all its territory, and the Russians still hold about 15, 16 percent of Ukraine's land. And most Ukrainians agree. The polls show that 80 percent or more of the Ukrainians want to keep on fighting to drive out the Russians, even if that means a protracted war. And that was certainly my experience talking to Ukrainians recently. And as for Putin, this past week, he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in order to secure more weapons. Now, you don't normally think of North Korea as a land of abundance, but they

do have artillery shells, and that's what Putin needs. He seems to believe he can outlast Ukraine and that the U.S. and Europe will tire of supporting Ukraine and that the war will sort of eventually break in his favor. We've been talking about fighting on the front lines, but what else are you keeping an eye on? Well, attacks behind the front lines inside Ukraine. You know, just this week, Ukraine claimed a couple of significant attacks in Crimea, the peninsula in the south, where it says it inflicted damage on Russian submarine and Russian warships. So Ukraine is now regularly hitting Russian supply lines and ammo dumps miles behind the front lines using missiles from the West. And bit by bit, this makes it harder

for Russia to resupply its troops in Ukraine. What about reports of attacks inside Russia itself? So that's something we're seeing with increasing frequency. Ukraine is now making its own drones, which can reach Moscow 300 miles away. Several times they forced Russia to temporarily shut down airports in the capital. So it's hard to measure exactly how much impact this is having on Russia's overall war effort. But it's clear that Ukraine's ability to carry out these long-range attacks has expanded dramatically over the past year and continues to get stronger. That's NPR's Greg Myhre. Greg, thank you so much. Sure thing, Aisha. And that's a first for Saturday, September 16th, 2023.

I'm Scott Simon. And I'm Aisha Roscoe. Tomorrow on The Sunday Story, a story about a coal mining town from the South African podcast Radio Workshop that works with youth reporters around the continent. Our Saturday version of this podcast was produced by Andrew Craig, Danny Hensel, and Gabe O'Connor. Our editors are Raphael Nam, Ed McNulty, Hadil Al-Shauchi,

and Melissa Gray. Our director is Michael Radcliffe with engineering support from Hannah Glevna. Evie Stone is our senior supervising editor. Sarah Lucy Oliver is our executive producer. And Jim Kane is our deputy managing editor. And thanks to all those people who lend their skills, their talents, and good cheer. Also to Weekend Edition. Yeah, they are the best, or that's what they put in the script. But no, seriously, they are the best.

And you can hear their work on the radio every Saturday and Sunday morning. Find your NPR station at stations.npr.org.