The UAW—my former union!—isn't happy with Joe "Mr. Union" Biden:
Shawn Fain, the head of the United Auto Workers, has privately expressed his frustration with Joe Biden, wanting the president and other Democratic lawmakers to come out more aggressively in support of his union, which launched a strike Friday against the so-called Big Three automakers.
Fain’s frustration was conveyed by five people familiar with his thinking, who were granted anonymity to describe his position. One of those five described him as “not happy” with the situation. And Fain’s not the only person in Michigan who isn’t thrilled with the way Biden and his team have handled the labor dispute.
Fain is famously aggressive, so it's no surprise to hear this even though Biden has offered stronger support for the union than any other president in memory. But I have a question: Is there any evidence from recent history that presidential support has any impact on union negotiations? I hear this same kind of thing at all levels—the mayor should get involved, the governor should get involved, the president should get involved—but none of those people have any actual authority to do anything, and thus no real leverage. President Biden could offer mediation assistance in the auto strike, but only if both sides want it. As far as I know, neither side wants it.
In any case, my understanding is that wages aren't the only sticking point here. There's also the UAW's desire to make sure that new plants making electric vehicles are unionized. But for some reason this never gets mentioned.
You should get around to addressing this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/15/biden-economy-bidenomics-poll-republicans-democrats-independents
I checked out that article and this bit caught my eye:
"The S&P 500 stock market index is up 16% so far this year. But 59% of respondents wrongly said they believe the S&P is down for the year compared with those who said they believe it is up (41%). The majority of all those asked said the S&P was down whether Republican (66%), independent (60%) or Democrat (52%)."
WTF? Something like 2/3 of Americans have some assets, usually via an IRA or 401K, invested in the stock market. How can this many people be so unbelievably ignorant about how their portfolio has done this year? This is literally like claiming it's snowing when outside the window it's clearly sunny and 65. Just because you don't "trust" meterologists these days. The mind reels.
I think the average person's understanding of the stock market is (to put it kindly) unsophisticated. The market is either UP or DOWN, and because it's been 21 months since the last all-time high, the market continues to be DOWN. There's little room for complicated analysis like 'the market was down last year and up this year.'
In fact, it's probably even simpler than that. Many people look no further than their balance. If it was higher in the past, the market is DOWN.
It's easy to mock unsophisticated investors. But failing to pay attention may actually be a good strategy. Fidelity regularly analyzes what behaviors lead to optimal results. Their best-performing accounts are almost always the ones with owners who never once during the year log in to trade, rebalance, or even look at their balance.
The administration's mediation/involvement was pretty key in averting the threatened rail strike last year, as well as in gettting a new contract that, among other things, guaranteed paid sick leave, which had been one of the major demands.
The feds, mostly the executive but also Congress, have a statutory role in railroad labor that they don't have in most other sectors. This goes back to the times when railroads were really the only way to move people and both bulk and high-value cargoes and were absolutely central to our economy. Of course that's much less the case now but the feds remain involved, and that fact should mean that a presidential whisper should mean more in that business than in the car business.
As gs says below, the feds ended up accepting a rail settlement without the paid leave the unions wanted and had the authority to order the unions to keep working. That's a big way railroad labor is different-- they don't have that authority over the UAW, at least in peacetime. (A third is the line on tax returns that references the special railroad retirement system.)
I believe this over sight may be the media who seems to be rather selective. I also heard that the workers were not happy with a 401K retirement and also the wheelbarrow loads of monies that the big guys in the haul in.
I think Presidents should be able to intervene in strikes above a certain size, and forcibly arbitrate a solution.
"Is there any evidence from recent history that presidential support has any impact on union negotiations?"
I don't think evidence of impact has any relevance here. The president can use their bully pulpit to lightly sway public opinion, and it certainly wouldn't hurt the UAW if Biden held a meeting with the Big Three to explain why better union wages and union factories for electric cars were good for America; whether or not the Big Three listened.
There hasn’t been a Big Three since either 1998 or 2009 depending on which foreign ownership of Chrysler you want to count.
They still make and sell more cars in the US than Tesla, with 10% of the market to Tesla's 4%.
Basically, they haven't been superseded yet.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/249375/us-market-share-of-selected-automobile-manufacturers/
It's hard to tell how much US manufacturing makes up their sales for the others.
Puts Stellantis fourth in market share. And only slightly ahead of Hyundai/Kia.
Going by that chart, if there is a “Big Three” it would be General Motors, Toyota, and Ford.
https://www.cars.com/articles/2023-cars-com-american-made-index-which-cars-are-the-most-american-467465/ provides a fascinating look at which cars are the most “American” …
As I recall, Biden signed a bill derailing (HAR!) the imminent rail worker strike last year, in effect taking paid sick leave off the table. They (Norfolk Southern employees, anyway) were only able to get sick leave a few months later in the wake of the Norfolk Southern disaster. This doesn't sound very "union friendly" to me.
After quite a long run of negotiating I think all the majors now have given in on paid leave. It's hard to over-estimate just how badly East Palestine weakened the railroads' public position in general, but it's also possible-- I think likely-- that the administration was pushing very hard behind the scenes to get to that result. There was a lot of support in Congress for paid leave at the time and that would have been the logical swap for the vote to head off a strike, because iirc the big reason for preventing it had to do with seasonal need to clear grain or something like that-- something that would make a strike bad for another politically sensitive sector (but I'm too lazy to look it up right now).
Maybe enough time has gone by that the administration should start crowing about its role there, if that's how it happened.
Yeah, you'd think if Biden'd had anything to do with the rail workers finally getting some paid sick leave then he'd want to make sure we knew about it.
Wait, Kevin, you were a member of the United Auto Workers???
Mother Jones partially unionized a few years back.
It would perhaps help if the Union wouldn't put out policy statements against EVs, as well.
This article makes a good case for building lots of hybrids with XXX kg of lithium batteries rather than make a far, far fewer number of EVs with same battery mass.
https://www.thedrive.com/features/toyota-is-right-we-need-more-hybrid-cars-and-fewer-evs-heres-why?fbclid=IwAR16GrZWtzSFxKljVp18LHn4ZpvLPio002QBES3V7XQq9YYxsJ9SiyGtPBg
That seems to go from "constrained"
to "fixed"
And it also seems to ignore that the carbon intensity of US electricity generation will continue to decline. And pretty much just waves hands at that with
I can see what the author is trying to say, but electricity generation and transportation have to get to zero regardless, which means that any issues of battery supply will have to be addressed.
Despite Toyota moving hybrids into mainstream and dramatically lowering carbon emissions, the company remains reluctant on embracing BEV. Their (Toyota's) case for hybrids is not predicated on a bridge to BEVs; it's an intended bridge to their hydrogen-based technology that remains cost-prohibitive. By delaying the transition to BEVs, Toyota's trying to give itself more time to lower the cost of green hydrogen production.
Furthermore, Akio Toyota stated his antipathy for BEVs over a decade ago. You should take everything that Toyota says with a bag of salt.
Consider: the average age of an American car is about 10 years, and we'll have to have a total ban on ICE by 2040 at the latest, which doesn't give us a lot of time to shift the paradigm on new cars let alone have two paradigm shifts from ICE to hybrid to BEV (or hydrogen, if you wish).
When it is for Something We Want, we look to Someone In Charge to be an Enlightened Despot.
When it is Something We Don't Want, we brand Someone In Charge an Authoritarian Despot.