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September 26, 2023 - 6:02pm
There has been much talk of the revival of organised labour in the West in the last few years. And as president Joe Biden visits Michigan today in support of the striking United Auto Workers (UAW), this might well be true.
After all, no sitting US president has ever visited the picket line, despite over a century of bitter industrial warfare in the US, reaching right back to the titanic — and bloody — clashes in the railroad and steel industries in the late nineteenth century. Yet despite the seemingly auspicious prospects for US unions today, the truth is that President Biden’s visit reflects the enduring weakness of organised labour rather than its strength.
To see this, let’s try a thought experiment: simply imagine any other sitting US president visiting a picket line in any other period of industrial militancy. Imagine Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower visiting the picket lines during the Steel Strike of 1959, which saw half a million workers come out, the biggest walk-out in US industrial history (compared with roughly 18,000 workers at the Detroit Three today).
Or imagine Democrat President Harry S. Truman visiting the picket line of the United Mine Workers of America in 1946, less than a year after the national emergency of the Second World War had ended, and in which 400,000 workers came out. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, architect of the New Deal, never visited a picket line during his four terms as president, despite his tenure in the White House encompassing another of the largest strikes in US history with the textile workers’ strike of 1934, which again saw 400,000 workers down tools.
Ever since President Theodore Roosevelt invited the representatives of striking coal miners and bosses to the White House in October 1902 in order to avoid the nightmarish prospect of what he called a ‘social war’, the federal government has explicitly built up its authority on mediating between labour and capital. For a US head of state to openly side with striking workers in the class struggles of the last century would have meant undercutting the federal government.
The fact that Biden is gracing the strikers with his presence is precisely because he knows that it will boost his authority rather than hurt it — and it will not hurt it because organised labour is simply not as strong as it was during the great strikes of the last century. We can rest assured that if the Democrats feared that a visit to the picket line would imperil relations with the billionaire donors and tech oligarchs on whom they depend, they would not be doing it.
Let us hope the UAW workers win better wages and benefits, and that they can manoeuvre between the GOP and Democrats. But let us not imagine that Biden’s visit heralds the triumphal revival of America’s working class.
Philip Cunliffe is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London. He is author or editor of eight books, as well as a co-author of Taking Control: Sovereignty and Democracy After Brexit (2023). He is one of the hosts of the Bungacast podcast.
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SubscribeI can no longer take any article seriously that says Joe Biden made any sort of decision.
I’m sure he makes many decisions every day. Some of them even important!
He probably makes the same decision several times not being able to remember that he already made the decision
His staff should let him take direct questions from workers about the future of EVs. Scranton Joe is a man of the people!
“We can rest assured that if the Democrats feared that a visit to the picket line would imperil relations with the billionaire donors and tech oligarchs on whom they depend, they would not be doing it.”
I suspect that’s true, which makes the Biden administration’s recently filed antitrust lawsuit against Amazon all the more interesting. That type of lawsuit certainly has the potential to alienate tech oligarchs, so why is the Biden administration doing it? Hopefully, Unherd will publish an article on that topic.
I’m sure there were lengthy behind-the-scenes negotiations with Bezos before the lawsuit was announced. It’s all theatre.
Exactly.
As with the Google anti-trust case, the Amazon one is no doubt acceptable to the company and heads off any real threats.
Washington is very good at the friendly lawsuit and regulatory action.
Look at Hunter Biden being charged with minor gun violations, the only things in the portfolio that don’t lead back to The Big Guy, while real crimes time out under the statute of limitations.
He thought it was a public reception to celebrate his intention to run again
And that everybody brought him some ice cream.
Just another heavily staged managed photo op set up with him by his handlers.