Biden backs auto union in strike for 40% pay hike and 32-hour week

WASHINGTON — President Biden endorsed a United Auto Workers strike at manufacturing plants of the “big three” domestic car makers as the union demands a 40% pay raise and a 32-hour work week.

“Over the last two — past decade, auto companies have seen record profits, including the last few years, because of the extraordinary skill and sacrifices of the UAW workers,” Biden, 80, said at the White House Friday, hours after the strike began.

“Those record profits have not been shared fairly, in my view, with those workers.”

Biden did not specifically recommend terms for a deal, but said that Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis “should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts.”

The president also said he was dispatching White House adviser Gene Sperling and acting labor secretary Julie Su as his emissaries to the talks.

Biden, who is seeking re-election next year, has taken pains to cast himself as an ardent supporter of labor unions.

His likely 2024 challenger, former President Donald Trump, won the key Midwestern states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in 2016 by appealing to working-class voters.

Biden carried those states by slim margins in 2020.

Trump, 77, would likely have to win those three swing states again to secure a second non-consecutive term and has called on the UAW to demand rollbacks of Biden’s environmental policies, including those that favor electric vehicles.

Trump blasted Biden during the last presidential campaign for supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) while a senator in the 1990s, Trump blamed the Clinton-era deal for causing US auto jobs to relocate to Mexico and other countries.

The 45th president renegotiated the trade pact while in office to boost Mexican pay requirements and make US labor more competitive.

Biden previously sought to play collective bargaining negotiator-in-chief last year ahead of a threatened rail worker strike.

When most of the unions involved rejected the deal brokered by Biden, the president signed legislation forcing them to accept it and continue working.