U.S. President Joe Biden joins striking members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) on the picket line outside the GM’s Willow Run Distribution Center, in Belleville, Wayne County, Michigan, U.S., September 26, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein Acquire Licensing Rights
ROCKFORD, Illinois, Nov 9 (Reuters) – President Joe Biden backed United Auto Workers’ efforts to unionize carmakers Tesla (TSLA.O) and Toyota (7203.T) as he departed for a meeting with the UAW president in Illinois later on Thursday.
Biden will meet with Shawn Fain, the head of the United Auto Workers, to highlight the tentative contract agreements between the union and Detroit’s Big Three Automakers that ended a nearly 45-day strike.
En route to the event, Biden told reporters that he “absolutely” supports the UAW’s efforts to unionize Tesla and Toyota workers.
In Illinois, Biden will deliver remarks praising gains for workers in the deals the UAW won, talk about how his economic policies, dubbed “Bidenomics,” are working and highlight plans to reopen an auto factory that Stellantis (STLAM.MI) wanted to close, according to the White House.
He will also meet with other UAW members, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and attend a political fundraiser.
In response to Biden’s remarks, Toyota said it wants to “foster positive morale” and boost productivity in its workforce. “The decision to unionize is ultimately made by our team members,” the Japanese automaker said in a statement.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the remark by Biden, who has backed UAW efforts in other speeches.
Fain previously said the union would seek to organize the nonunion workforces in the U.S. plants of foreign carmakers. Union leaders have signaled Toyota could be one of the first to face those efforts, especially at its sprawling Georgetown, Kentucky, plant.
The UAW has tried and failed for years to organize nonunion U.S. auto factories, most of them built by Asian and European legacy automakers in southern U.S. states where so-called right to work labor laws make it optional for workers to pay union dues.
In September, Biden joined a picket line with striking UAW workers in Michigan, where he also met Fain. The appearance was the first by a U.S. president with striking workers in modern history and showed the importance of union support in the 2024 presidential election, even though unions represent only about 10% of U.S. workers.
MUSK’S ANTI-UNION STANCE
Biden’s comments may renew friction between the U.S. president and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, as the UAW seeks to organize Tesla workers.
Musk and Biden sparred in recent years, and in 2021 Musk said Biden’s electric-vehicle policy appeared to be controlled by labor unions. Biden first publicly acknowledged Tesla’s EV production in February 2022, after Musk repeatedly complained about being ignored by the president.
Recently, the UAW tried and failed to win enough support from workers at Tesla’s Fremont, California, factory to hold an organizing vote. The plant was a UAW shop when it was jointly owned by GM and Toyota and known as NUMMI.
The UAW filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over a 2018 Musk tweet in which he asked “why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing.” The NLRB ruled the tweet violated laws prohibiting management threats against workers for supporting unionization.
PRESIDENTIAL ENDORSEMENT?
Thursday’s appearance will once again allow Biden to showcase his pro-union credentials to the UAW, which has yet to endorse Biden, making the union one of the major holdouts as other labor organizations have backed the Democratic president.
In September, UAW’s Fain ruled out meeting former Republican President Donald Trump, casting him as an out-of-touch billionaire, who does not have “any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for.”
Labor leaders and Democratic officials said an endorsement from the UAW for Biden is expected after the union’s members approve their tentative contract agreements, which dramatically raises pay for auto workers and ended a strike targeting General Motors (GM.N), Ford (F.N) and Stellantis, the maker of Jeep, Dodge and Ram vehicles.
The relationship between Biden and Fain “didn’t start as cozy as it is now,” said Mark Burton, a partner at the law firm of Honigman and a former chief strategist of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.
But Biden taking on a “more supportive but silent role” during the UAW negotiations improved the relationship, Burton said, adding that Biden “has formed a good working relationship with Shawn Fain and I think the near-term result will be an endorsement.”
Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington
Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and David Shepardson in Washington and Sayantani Ghosh in San Francisco
Editing by Heather Timmons, Ben Klayman and Matthew Lewis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
