Joe Biden has called himself the “most pro-union president in American history.”
He has also staked his political legacy on ushering in a clean energy revolution driven by the shift away from the internal combustion engine and toward electric cars. [emphasis, links added]
Those two goals are now in stark conflict amid a historic strike at America’s biggest carmakers.
[Last] Friday, workers at the “Big Three” auto companies, Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler owner Stellantis, began an unprecedented walkout.
Some 12,700 staff at plants in the Rust Belt states of Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri downed tools.
The strikes, coordinated by the United Auto Workers union, are expected to escalate over the coming days, although plans are being kept under wraps to maximize disruption.
The workers have myriad grievances. They are seeking a 36pc pay rise over four years (a figure linked to what the Big Three’s chief executives are now paid), a 32-hour workweek, and more annual days off.
But looming in the background is another concern: that the generational shift to electric cars championed by Biden is a threat to their livelihoods.
The strike now threatens to become a political quandary for Biden, little more than a year before an election that will be seen as a referendum on his economic stewardship. […]
The political stakes are high for Biden.
America’s carmaking industry is concentrated in a handful of states that are likely to be decisive in determining who wins next year’s election, in particular Michigan, won by Biden in 2020 and by Donald Trump in 2016.
Car manufacturing is so crucial to the state that a 40-day strike in 2019 tipped the state’s economy into a quarter of negative growth.
“The Rust Belt is practically a must-win for Biden in 2024,” analysts at political consultancy Beacon Research said in a note.
They wrote: “The president can’t have his cake and eat it too; his agenda comes with necessary trade-offs. Biden has to check the ambitions of his climate goals to avoid undermining political ones.”
Top photo via YouTube screencap
Read rest at Telegraph
Biden should have a car like in the Flintstone’s just use your feet and a all the way Coast to Coast Across America
I note that the number of cheap Chinese BV imports wasn’t mentioned in this article, nor the fact that US made BV’s are not selling. The economic fallout from all of this could inflict massive damage to the auto industry. Watch this space !!! It’s going to be ugly.