Auto workers strike would test Biden's assertion he's the 'most pro-union president in US history'
The prospect of an auto workers strike could test Joe Biden’s treasured assertion he’s the most pro-union president in U.S. history
LANSING, Mich. — The prospect of an auto workers strike could test Joe Biden's treasured assertion that he's the most pro-union president in U.S. history.
The United Auto Workers is threatening to strike against the nation’s big three automakers, General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, if tentative contact agreements aren't reached by 11:59 p.m. on Thursday. That could reshape the political landscape in the battleground state of Michigan and potentially unleash economic shockwaves nationwide.
The auto industry accounts for about 3% of the nation's gross domestic product and as many as 146,000 workers may walk off their jobs. While the effects would be most immediate in Michigan and other states with high concentrations of auto jobs, such as Ohio and Indiana, a prolonged strike could trigger car shortages and layoffs in auto-supply industries and other sectors.
“Anything that goes beyond a week, you’re going to start feeling the pain," said Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. «And anything beyond two weeks, that’s when the effects start to compound.»
Doc Killian, who has worked in a Ford assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, for 26 years, says he can no longer afford the cars he helps build, crystallizing how the nation's middle class has been squeezed.
“I think the American public as a whole realizes the impact that the American auto workers have on the economy," Killian said. «If we suffer, the American economy suffers.”
Biden has built his political career around just such an argument, repeating the mantra that the “middle class built America, and
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