Barring a last-ditch breakthrough, more than 7,000 workers are expected to roll off truck and bus assembly lines Friday night in the battleground state of North Carolina, receiving an infusion of fresh labor from the United Auto Workers union. southern activism Going directly into the 2024 election.
North Carolina has never welcomed organized labor, and a late-night strike at the North American subsidiary of German industrial giant Daimler Trucks was greeted with anxiety by the state’s Democratic establishment. .
But Sean Fein, the UAW’s brash new president, isn’t too concerned.
“I don’t expect politicians to save the day, but at the end of the day, politicians have a duty to the people who elected them,” he said in an interview Thursday. “This is the moment that will define a generation.” Now is the time for politicians to choose sides. ”
President Biden joined the UAW’s picket line for a successful strike against three major U.S. companies in September, and on Thursday, White House press secretary Robin Patterson said the president could become similarly aggressive if a Daimler strike occurs. It was suggested that there is a sex.
“President Biden will ensure that those who benefit from our strong support for American-made manufacturing maintain high-wage, middle-class jobs, including those in North Carolina, and that all workers “We strongly believe that we should do everything we can to keep them employed. They have a fair and free choice to join a union if they wish,” she said.
North Carolina’s Democratic leaders, including Gov. Roy Cooper, were far more ambivalent and deferential toward Daimler Trucks, the state’s major employer.
“North Carolina’s workers are some of the best and most productive in the world, and they deserve a fair wage,” Cooper said in a statement Thursday. “We are proud that Daimler Trucks and its amazing UAW employees are building the future of electric school bus travel here in North Carolina. We will continue to monitor contract negotiations and encourage a swift resolution.”
Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat who is running to replace the term-limited governor, issued a similarly cautious statement.
“North Carolina workers provide the best products in the world, and they deserve to be recognized,” he said. “I have been in contact with both parties and encouraged them to continue working toward an agreement that supports workers and enables the continued success of the company.”
Making the issue even more sensitive, one of the union’s central grievances is the transition to electric vehicles that Mr. Biden is pushing, part of which is a clean school bus program worth $5 billion. Through the program, $14 million worth of federal funds are being funneled directly to Daimler’s Thomas Built Buses. Millions of people purchased Thomas Built electric buses in and through the High Point, North Carolina, school district. The union says workers at the High Point plant are among the lowest paid in the company.
“Our tax dollars are not being put into these companies to support an EV transition just to make a few people at the top rich and leave everyone else behind,” Fein said. Told. “We need better standards.”
For the UAW, the success of the strike in the state, which has the second lowest percentage of union members in the nation, is critical. Three major U.S. automakers shut down operations for six weeks last fall, securing the biggest wage increases in decades.
This helped push UAW organizations into the union-free South. Workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee voted overwhelmingly to join the union last week, a milestone that provided a beachhead for union organizers. Daimler Trucks North America is unionized, but UAW leaders are planning to hold talks with Daimler plants in Mount Holly, Cleveland, High Point, and Gastonia, North Carolina, ahead of next month’s Mercedes union vote. , is hoping to win record wage increases at parts distribution centers in Atlanta and Memphis. Benz of Alabama.
“Our fight at Daimler is closely tied to something happening in the South,” Fein told members Tuesday night in a broadcast from Detroit. “Ununionized auto workers at auto companies have launched a nationwide campaign to form a union.”
However, Tennessee and Alabama will not participate in 2024. North Carolina will participate, but Democratic politicians there appear to be holding off on holding it.
Ferrell Guillory, a professor at the University of North Carolina, said Cooper and Stein have positioned themselves as centrists and have centered their success on improving North Carolina’s education and job training and diversifying its economy. .
“Politically speaking, there’s no particular upside for a centrist or center-left Democrat to go through what Gretchen Whitmer did,” he said of the union-heavy Michigan governor. He said while referring to it. “Cooper and Stein are not anti-union, but neither are they Northern politicians.”
By contrast, Biden has declared himself “the most pro-union president in history” and has garnered support from unions, with the latest endorsement coming Wednesday from the construction unions of North America. Biden’s aggressive intervention could put him at odds with North Carolina’s top Democratic Party at a time when the life of the state’s highest office is at stake.
A year ago, the Biden administration appeared to be using federal electric school bus grants to help the United Steelworkers unionize at school bus company Bluebird in Fort Valley, Georgia. Two weeks before the union vote, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that the government, which administers the Clean School Bus Program, would require recipients of federal grants to detail the benefits they provide to employees and that businesses urged them to “remain neutral in any organizing movement.”
At this time, an EPA spokesperson said the agency is not involved with Daimler.
Fein said Thursday that the union is working with the administration and that responsibility for a potential strike lies at the feet of management. But he recognized the political influence of large labor movements in battleground states.
“You’re either going to stand with working-class people and the people who run this country and run this world, or you’re going to stand with corporations and business leaders and billionaires,” he said. . “And if they choose to do that, we will see a change when it comes time to vote.”
Labor union advocacy groups are hoping for a Democratic Party breakthrough. Ahead of the Volkswagen vote in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Republican governors in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas issued statements saying unionization would save jobs in their states’ auto industries. He said it would be threatening. Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs with Justice, which supports workers seeking unionization and collective bargaining, said Thursday that Cooper stands in contrast to North Carolina, which is largely anti-union. said it should.
“Workers want democracy and are doing their part to fight for it,” she said. “They are giving us and politicians like Roy Cooper an opportunity to right centuries of wrongs.”
Daimler spokeswoman Anja Weinert said the company was continuing negotiations “in good faith.”
The new agreement “enables Daimler Trucks North America to continue delivering the products that enable our customers to keep the world moving,” she said.
The UAW takes a different view. On Thursday, the company filed a four-count complaint with Biden’s National Labor Relations Board, accusing Daimler Trucks of retaliating against union organizers, obstructing collective bargaining, discriminating against union members and negotiating in bad faith. did.
It’s clear that labor unions, which have already supported the president’s re-election bid, want Biden’s support. In talks before the strike, the UAW favored subsidies for electric school buses.
“The government spends up to $345,000 of taxpayer dollars per bus,” union officials wrote. “Meanwhile, the workers who make the products recognize that their quality of life is heading in the wrong direction.”Members ask, “Why do American taxpayers subsidize corporate greed?” Do I have to do it?” I wonder.
