The 2024 presidential candidates are wading into the strike against the “Big Three” automakers. Here is where they stand on the strike and negotiations.
United Auto Workers, the country’s largest auto union, announced the strike on Sept. 14, just before workers’ existing contracts lapsed. The strike against Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis began with just three plants facing work stoppages, but UAW President Shawn Fain, who has drawn headlines for his confrontational stance in negotiations, announced a major expansion last week.
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In an update to members, Fain said Friday that while progress has been made in negotiations with Ford, the strike has not moved the needle much in talks with General Motors or Stellantis. The expansion added all GM and Stellantis parts distribution facilities to the strike, bringing the total number of facilities on strike to 38 locations across 20 states.
The escalation ups the ante for negotiations and means that the work stoppages will have an even bigger effect on the overall economy. As the strike gets more serious, President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump, and the other presidential hopefuls have started facing questions about the negotiations and what should be done.
Joe Biden
Biden has painted himself as the most pro-union president in U.S. history — so how he positions himself during the negotiations and the messaging coming out of the White House is important, particularly given that most of the facilities on strike are in Michigan, a critical swing state that went to Biden in 2020 but voted for Trump in 2016.
Biden, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and other administration officials have urged both sides to negotiate in earnest to reach an agreement favorable to workers, although the president took support for workers a step further last week when he announced he would join them on the picket line.
“Tuesday, I'll go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create,” Biden posted Friday evening. “It's time for a win-win agreement that keeps American auto manufacturing thriving with well-paid UAW jobs.”
It was the clearest show of support yet from the administration to UAW, which under Fain’s leadership has displayed a notable lack of interest in White House involvement — even reportedly rebuffing some White House assistance in negotiations.
The Trump campaign has cast Biden’s visit as an insincere political move, with Trump’s campaign manager asserting that Biden’s decision to travel to Detroit is “nothing more than a cheap photo op as he finds himself between a rock and a political hard place.”
Biden has faced other major moments with organized labor since entering office.
Last year, Biden was criticized by some pro-union figures for getting involved with a massive labor dispute involving rail workers. Biden prevented a strike by convening a presidential emergency board under the Railway Labor Act of 1926, and ultimately Congress used its authority to impose an agreement between the two sides.
The White House won some plaudits from labor advocates after officials worked with dockworkers and West Coast ports to avert a strike and come to an agreement amid contract negotiations earlier this year. The deal avoided a major blow to the country’s supply chains.
Donald Trump
Trump is also working to inject himself into the strikes.
Trump will be visiting Detroit on Wednesday evening to address hundreds of current and former UAW members. The visit is especially notable because, unlike other Republicans who typically spurn organized labor, the former president is working to build blue-collar support in the Rust Belt, a region of swing states that handed him the election in 2016. The address also serves as counterprogramming as it coincides almost exactly with a debate involving other GOP presidential contenders that Trump decided to skip.
Trump has focused less on the direct demands of the workers — think higher wages, four-day workweeks, better pensions — but rather has taken aim at the Biden administration’s support of transitioning away from gasoline-powered cars in favor of electric vehicles.
There have been concerns that new EV factories might not employ as many workers as those needed in traditional auto plants, and Trump has seized on that to urge auto workers to reject the transition and push back on Biden.
Trump has also suggested that the only reason Biden is visiting Michigan this week is in response to his own visit, which was announced ahead of the White House’s announcement that Biden would be joining the picket line.
“Crooked Joe Biden, who is killing the United Autoworkers with his WEAK stance on China and his ridiculous insistence on All Electric Cars, every one of which will be made in China, saw that I was going to Michigan this week (Wednesday!), so the Fascists in the White House just announced he would go there tomorrow,” Trump said on social media.
Fain, while not necessarily embracing Biden’s overtures, has outright rejected Trump.
Ron DeSantis
DeSantis has been largely mum on the strike, although he has taken a page out of Trump’s book and used the moment to bash Biden over the administration’s support for the electric vehicle transition.
“With respect to the auto industry and the autoworkers, one of the things that is a big threat to that is Biden’s push to impose electric vehicle mandates,” DeSantis told KCCI. “The reality is that’s not where the market is, we want to preserve the ability of automakers to actually produce the type of vehicles that people want to buy — that will mean more autoworker jobs because the industry will do better, the companies will do better.”
Nikki Haley
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who also served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, has drawn a sharp contrast to her former boss and has vociferously pushed back against the UAW strike and work stoppages imposed by the union.
Haley branded herself a “union buster” during an interview with Fox News in which she highlighted how as governor, she recruited foreign auto manufacturers to South Carolina.
“When you have a president who is constantly saying, ‘Go union, go union,’ this is what you get. The unions get emboldened, and then they start asking for things that companies have a tough time doing,” she said.
Tim Scott
Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) has embraced the more traditional GOP approach to labor unions. He has taken a strong line against the striking workers and invoked the legacy of former President Ronald Reagan, a stalwart of fiscal conservatism, in pushing back on the UAW strike.
“Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal boys decided to strike: ‘You strike, you’re fired.’ Simple concept to me to the extent that we could use that once again,” Scott said during a recent campaign event. “Absolutely.”
Reagan notoriously fired thousands of federal workers in 1981 who did not return to work when ordered to.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy took to social media to blast Biden’s planned Michigan appearance and said the economic woes that workers might be experiencing stem from deeper issues.
“Biden’s trip to 'protest' in Michigan is a smokescreen to deflect reality & the UAW strike is just a symptom of the deeper problem: a trifecta of rising prices + rising interest rates + stagnant wages,” Ramaswamy posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Mike Pence
Former Vice President Mike Pence also blamed the transition toward electric vehicles as being a major driver of the UAW strike.
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“I guarantee you that one of the things that’s driving that strike is that Bidenomics and their green energy, electric vehicle agenda is good for Beijing and bad for Detroit, and American autoworkers know it,” he said on CNBC.