President Joe Biden visited the United Auto Workers union picket line outside a General Motors parts distribution center in Belleville, Michigan, on Tuesday, making him the first sitting president to join a picket line.
“Stick with it, because you deserve the significant raise you need and other benefits,” he said through a megaphone to a few dozen UAW members.
UAW President Shawn Fain, who accompanied him on the visit, thanked the president for his solidarity.
“Thank you, Mr. President, for coming ― thank you for coming to stand up with us in our generation’s defining moment,” he said. “And we know the president will do right by the working class. And when we do right by the working class, you can leave the rest to us, because we’re going to take care of this business.”
Fain and the current slate of UAW officers supplanted a more conservative and scandal-plagued class of union leaders in a March election.
With Fain at the helm, the UAW has thus far declined to endorse Biden’s bid for a second term, although it endorsed him in 2020. The union has cited concerns that automakers receiving federal subsidies to produce electric vehicles are providing pay and benefits that are far below what unionized workers in the legacy industry receive.
But Fain’s remarks were a major vote of confidence in Biden, who stood arm-in-arm with a UAW member while Fain spoke and then took back the megaphone to offer a few final pro-union comments.
“Let me say it many times: Wall Street didn’t build the country. The middle class built the country. And unions built the middle class! That’s a fact,” Biden declared.
“You deserve what you’ve earned,” he added. “And you’ve earned a hell of a lot more than what you’re getting paid right now.”
Biden endorsed the UAW strike shortly after it began on Sept. 15. The union is calling for pay hikes of over 40% to match increases in executive pay, a speedy phase-out of the two-tier compensation system, and a restoration of benefits given up during the auto bankruptcies and bailouts in 2009.
The political need for Biden to hold an in-person event with UAW members became greater, however, after former President Donald Trump announced plans to rally with union workers in Detroit on Wednesday during the second GOP presidential debate.
Trump, who made inroads with blue-collar union members in 2016, claims that the Biden administration’s policies supporting a rapid transition to electric vehicles jeopardize union members’ jobs.