The
United Auto Workers strike against the Big Three U.S. automakers, Ford,
General Motors and Stellantis, formerly Chrysler, no matter the merits
of the workers’ yearnings, shouldn’t have happened. Once it got going,
it shouldn’t have lasted. The White House should have spoken.
Already
there is damage. Ford has “paused” plans to build a $3.5-billion
battery plant in Michigan. If the strike drags on or if the industry
bows to the most damaging demand in the union’s wish list (a 32-hour
work week), then the production of EVs and battery leadership will be
ceded to other countries. U.S. automakers’ dependence on China — the
world ’s top battery maker for EVs — will continue.
The U.S. auto industry is starting its EV surge behind others, and it will suffer mightily if the UAW doesn’t return to work.
In
this circumstance, with so much at stake, it would be reasonable to
expect President Joe Biden to have both sides closeted at Camp David
and to be “knocking heads together.”
The
president is the ultimate arbitrator, the one we look to for guidance
and to tell us what is best. Yet, instead of bringing both sides
together in the national interest, Biden has chosen sides, and chosen to
walk the picket line.
Even Steven Rattner, the Democrats’ mechanic when it comes to auto issues, has said this is wrong.
Rattner
— whom I caroused with when he was reporter at The New York Times,
before he became fabulously rich on Wall Street — is through-and-through
a Democrat and one of the party’s intellectuals. In 2009, he authored
the rescue plan for the auto industry. At that time, it looked like
General Motors and Chrysler were headed for permanent closure.
What was Biden thinking? Why did he abandon the high ground of the presidency?
How
can Biden now sit down and bring both sides to the table to negotiate
in good faith? He has already declared his allegiance to one.
I believe in the value of unions: guarantors of middle-class life for many. I am not just saying that. I have lived it.
I
was once the president of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. I
am very proud of the financial settlement we got on my watch for
reporters and editors at The Washington Post. It was a breakthrough: a
67 percent pay raise over three years.
The
newspaper industry was very prosperous at the time, whereas reporters
and editors were poorly paid. It was long before the internet would
crush the industry, reducing it to its present state of poverty and
collapse. We were asking for some of the goodies we had created. There
was no danger of The Washington Post moving to China.
Sadly,
the unions have been slow to adjust to new realities. They are stuck in
a mindset of the days when we were a country of industrial robber
barons and industrial unions made sense. Now we are a service economy
desperately seeking re-industrialize. EVs are important in that effort.
I
ran into outdated union thinking head-on at the Washington-Baltimore
Newspaper Guild. Although we were largely autonomous, we were a chapter
of the American Newspaper Guild, our head office.
I
had a proposal for simplifying work schedules for editorial staff. My
proposal was that editorial staff work three days — 10 to 12 hours a day
— and have three days off. My colleagues loved it, The Washington Post
management saw it as a solution to overtime and weekend staffing
problems. I had seen it work well at the BBC in London, where it was
standard practice.
The
ANG head office went berserk: It was a betrayal of union history and
the “model” contract, written by the legendary reporter, columnist and
ANG founder, Heywood Broun, in 1935. In ongoing negotiations with The
Post, I dropped the proposal to everyone’s regret. That kind of legacy
thinking is what has been killing unions and unionism.
There
is a backstory to the Hollywood writers’ strike and the auto workers’
stoppage: artificial intelligence. It will change lives and is a threat
to the kind of work unions have protected.
Biden might well have chosen the strikes as a chance to bring about settlements, but also to begin a national dialogue on AI.
Instead, Biden walked a picket line, resolving nothing.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of “White House Chronicle” on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com.
On Twitter: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of "White House Chronicle" on PBS. |