LANSING, Mich. — Wearing a green beanie and leather work boots, Jakeob Carson walked into new member orientation on a recent Monday excited to earn nearly double what he did at his last job.
Carson is part of the biggest-ever crop of apprentices at the local United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters, which is in the midst of a boom that its officials describe with adjectives like “unfathomable,” “historic,” and “unprecedented.” The union is expanding by 20 percent, in part to fill jobs at two huge new electric vehicle battery plants tied to a massive climate bill that President Biden and Democrats in Congress pushed into law in 2022. Union leaders here credit those investments for the bonanza.
Yet it’s not clear whether rank-and-file members agree — or if they’re even aware how the president’s initiatives have spurred the building trades’ fastest-ever growth spurt.
“I don’t see really how politics affects my life or this job,” said Carson, 25, as he finished his the first class of orientation, on the history of the U.S. labor movement.
Who wins this crucial swing state could depend on the ability of union leaders to persuade workers like Carson to back the president. The union has already endorsed Biden’s reelection bid. But it is only now launching efforts to mobilize members to vote. Carson said he did not vote in 2020, and that he isn’t sure who he’ll support in November. But if union leaders have a preference, he said, “I’ll certainly listen to what they have to say.”
Eight years ago, Donald Trump’s appeals to blue-collar workers won over enough union voters to help him flip the pivotal states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania on the way to the White House. In the aftermath of the stunning collapse of their “blue wall” in 2016, Democratic leaders vowed to never again allow a GOP candidate to splinter their union base, committing to rectify the perceived failure of Hillary Clinton’s campaign to appeal to bread-and-butter economic policies.
Biden won those states in 2020, and as president, he has done almost everything within his power to keep these voters.
Virtually all of the president’s most important legislation — the 2021 stimulus plan; investments in infrastructure and semiconductor production; the clean energy bill — were priorities of labor groups. The administration has showered union workers with subsidies, tax credits, pension bailouts, apprenticeship funds and more. Biden routinely boasts of being the “most pro-union president” in U.S. history and has been determined to prove it, taking the unprecedented step of joining the United Auto Workers on the picket line, appointing staunch union allies to key positions, keeping Trump’s protectionist tariffs in place and inviting upstart labor organizers to the White House. Some of Biden’s allies have chafed at the extent to which the president has prioritized aligning with labor over other goals, such as fighting climate change or lowering consumer costs, when they appear to come into conflict.
Labor historians agree that no president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has more firmly allied himself with organized labor.
And yet it’s unclear to what extent these material benefits will pay political dividends this November, even among the people the president is wooing. Union workers in Michigan backed Biden by a 25-point margin in 2020, according to the National Election Pool exit poll, although some polls found a smaller margin. But a Fox News poll this month found Biden’s lead among union voters in Michigan was just 12 points. (Both candidates are expected to win Tuesday’s primaries in the state.)
A substantially narrower margin of victory among union voters on Election Day than Biden had four years ago could result in Trump retaking the White House, campaign strategists say.
Biden has already hemorrhaged support among Michigan’s Arab American population over his position on Israel’s war in Gaza. He may need not to just retain, but grow, his union base if he is going to win Michigan and other pivotal Midwest states.
The result could have profound consequences not just for the election, but the future of the Democratic Party. Conservative and even some centrist economists say siding with unions so often has hurt Biden among other voters, resulting in larger price tags for federal contracts and additional costs to consumers. And union voters are a smaller share of the overall electorate than they used to be: Nationally, union workers represent only about 11 percent of the labor force, and 13 percent even in labor-friendly Michigan.
“Democrats have been shocked by the degree to which blue-collar and union America has moved toward Trump-y populism since 2016,” said Brian Riedl, policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. “Biden has done almost everything possible to win them back. But it’s unclear how much all these policies are really going to matter in November.”
In a statement, Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt criticized Trump’s anti-union policies, adding: “We have a strong record to run on with union members, and we will continue to work hard to earn their vote.”
At Ford’s factory in Dearborn, where James Benson has worked for more than two decades, he leads a team attaching the frame and side to the cab of the truck that becomes electric F-150 Lightning and gas-powered F-150 trucks. Every shift, the crew prepares roughly 700 vehicles.
Ford is receiving a $9.2 billion loan through Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, and the F-150 Lightning qualifies for a generous EV tax credit from the law, spurring production on the assembly line. In Washington, Democrats celebrated these subsidies as likely to pull autoworkers in Detroit toward the president.
But Benson, who voted for Barack Obama twice before voting for Trump in 2020, argues that the EV subsidies are a waste of taxpayer funds and that shifting to electric will make Ford less competitive in the long run. Along with thousands of other UAW members, Benson will receive a $10,000 bonus this March from Ford as part of a profit-sharing agreement negotiated by the union.
“While that’s great, that’s $9.2 billion of my taxpayer money you threw into the furnace,” said Benson, 46, adding that he plans to support Trump again in 2024. “It’s insulting; it’s irritating; it’s frustrating. “’
Benson’s frustrations with the president — among them, objections to Democratic covid policies and foreign aid bills — may reflect the limits of even pro-union economic policy geared toward the Rust Belt to win over rank-and-file workers.
Michigan’s economy is thriving in part because of Biden’s legislation. The state’s 30 new clean energy projects are the most in the nation, and private manufacturing construction is more than three times what it was when the president took office, according to the White House. But even when union members support the president’s labor policies, union leaders say they confront the same objections Democrats face everywhere over Biden — his age, taxpayer funding for the war in Ukraine, inflation and the rising cost of living.
“There are a lot of questions. I’m hearing a lot of people who are undecided about what they’re going to do,” said Keith Combs, a postal union leader in downtown Detroit, who emphasized that the booming economy has been good for labor groups across the state. “A lot of people still think he’s too old and aren’t sure if the vice president will be able to carry on his agenda. My feeling is many of them are going to stay home.”
Those concerns surface even among the unions most directly benefiting from the president’s agenda. The Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council, which represents unions primarily in the booming construction industry, is in the process of asking members for their views on the upcoming election and has not yet endorsed a presidential candidate. But in a meeting in their Lansing headquarters, union leaders said they are already bracing for a divisive election season push.
Trump will make an aggressive pitch to the same workers — he visited a Michigan factory the day after Biden walked the UAW picket line, blasting the administration’s record.
“Our members come to the union and hear the state of our unions and the state of their environment, and then they go home and read a news article or read something on Facebook,” lamented Steve Claywell, the council’s president.
And yet for all the skepticism that remains, Biden’s legislative achievements have given union leaders here a much better chance to convince their members to give him a second term.
Some of the signs are encouraging for Democrats. In 2020, for instance, some construction and building trades unions took a cautious approach. Older, Whiter and more Trump-friendly unions like the Laborers’ International Union of North America endorsed Biden in September 2020, two months before the election. LIUNA has already backed Biden for 2024.
The UAW also endorsed Biden earlier than it did in 2020, doing so after the presidential trip to the picket line, a move that administration officials initially resisted. The plumbers and pipe fitters’ union similarly waited until August 2020 to back Biden, and has also already endorsed him this year.
The growth of the union in central Michigan is difficult to overstate — and it reflects the remarkably successful imprint of Democrats’ new focus on labor and industrial policy.
For most of the past decade, the United Association’s Lansing office had fewer than 1,000 members. As many as 100 at a time had to travel for work in other cities, leaving their families for months. Many workers were laid off for 20 months in the aftermath of the Great Recession, and the union had to turn down hundreds of aspiring apprentices for lack of job opportunities.
Now the union plans on growing its membership by at least 20 percent, said Price Dobernick, the union’s leader. Two EV battery plants spurred by Biden’s climate law alone — Ultium Cells Lansing and a Ford plant in the Marshall area — could each create as many as 500 workers when completed, according to Dobernick. That’s on top of broader growth in construction that’s also creating jobs. The UA’s apprentice program has gone from roughly 50 trainees at a time to close to 200 now.
On a recent Monday, the training center bore ample signs of a boom. Three laminated boards displayed the facility’s planned 8,000 square-foot expansion, which will triple the number of available parking spaces. Trainees cut beveled steel pipes in a new practice space for beginner welders.
“It’s unfathomable to us. Unfathomable. In the history of our union hall, 134 years, we’ve never even come close to these numbers. With all the acts coming out of Democrats in Washington, the work — and the quality of work — around here has just been unprecedented. We are living through a second industrial revolution right before our very eyes. You are looking at it,” said Trent Mauk, a training specialist at the UA. Mauk added: “Any one who supports us … We’re going to take care of those that look out for our best interests as well.”
At the other end of the training center, Erik Kosloski, 40, a United Association plumber and pipe fitter who has recently started teaching classes, said he voted for Biden in 2020 and would like to support a Democrat again but is unsure who he will back in 2024.
Kosloski said he disagrees with some of Biden’s policies, and argued that Congress deserves more credit for some of the recent pro-union bills to pass than the president.
“We’re growing incredibly fast. The security is incredible,” Kosloski said. “But to me, it’s not so much political in terms of what can I see improving right here in front of me. That’s my point of view.”
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/26/michigan-biden-unions-trump-election/