A President on the Picket Line?
Why Biden’s solidarity with autoworkers is globally unprecedented.
Some 25,000 members of the United Auto Workers union are currently on strike in the United States, with union leaders threatening to expand the strike to more factories if their demands aren’t met. The union wants a 46 percent pay increase and a four-day work week from Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler and Jeep. It’s already the biggest labor action in the auto industry in years—and the most disruptive to national politics. President Joe Biden took the unprecedented step of actually appearing on picket lines this week, while former President Donald Trump spoke to a separate group of non-union autoworkers.
Adam Tooze is a columnist at Foreign Policy and a history professor and the director of the European Institute at Columbia University. He is the author of Chartbook, a newsletter on economics, geopolitics, and history. Twitter: @adam_tooze
Cameron Abadi is a deputy editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @CameronAbadi
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