A United Auto Employees member on a picket line outside the Ford Motor Co. Michigan Assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, on Sept. 15, 2023.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The Biden administration isn’t any longer sending two key officials to Detroit this week to potentially help broker a deal between striking autoworkers and the Big Three automobile corporations, a White House official told NBC News.
President Joe Biden last week said he would dispatch White House senior advisor Gene Sperling and acting Labor Secretary Julie Su to support discussions between the businesses and the United Auto Employees union.
However the White House and the UAW mutually agreed it could be higher to talk virtually via Zoom, the official said Tuesday.
Sperling and Su could still go to Detroit next week but there are not any firm plans for them to achieve this, the official added. “We’ll proceed to evaluate travel timing based on the energetic state of negotiations,” the White House official said.
Biden largely sided with the striking autoworkers in an address Friday. The president called on Ford, General Motors and Stellantis to share record profits with their employees.
Despite that, Biden has received a comparatively cold reception from the UAW.
The union’s president, Shawn Fain, told MSNBC on Monday that he doesn’t see a significant role for the White House in resolving the dispute.
“This battle just isn’t concerning the president,” Fain said. “It isn’t concerning the former president or some other person prior to that. This battle is concerning the employees standing up for economic and social justice and getting their justifiable share because they’re fed up with going backwards.”
Nearly 13,000 UAW members are on strike at three key plants in Michigan, Missouri and Ohio. It’s the primary time the union has targeted all three automakers at the identical time.
Fain said late Monday that the UAW would launch additional strikes at more Ford, GM and Stellantis plants if “serious progress” just isn’t made in negotiations by midday Friday.
“Autoworkers have waited long enough to make things right on the Big Three. We’re not waiting around, and we’re not messing around. So, noon on Friday, Sept. 22, is a latest deadline,” Fain said in a video released by the union.
Biden, who often touts his middle-class upbringing, has sought to closely associate himself with the labor movement. However the strikes could test the president’s commitment to organized labor if the work stoppages expand and threaten broader economic disruption as he seeks a second term in office.
Former President Donald Trump had called on the UAW to endorse his 2024 bid to retake the presidency, while at the identical time attacking the union’s leadership.
Trump is planning to skip the GOP primary debate next week and as a substitute travel to Detroit to talk with union members.
