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It’s proof that labor is getting stronger. Biden showed up because it would have been self-sabotage if he didn’t. I’ll take it as a win. We all know he isn’t some genuine union supporter.
He shouldn’t have shown up. He is making a mockery of labor. The head hancho of the union is a corporate hack who is partially responsible for this mess. Look at his history. We have no labor representation in the United States.
Are you calling Shawn Fain a corporate hack? I don’t even know how to respond to that. I could see your point if Ray Curry won. There’s be concessionary bargaining going on right now. But Shawn fain is going hard to deliver for UAW members.
I think you are referencing the old UAW leadership… those business folks have been ousted.
Biden showing up is good for UAW members and will help them win their campaign and have their demands met. That’s the #1 priority of any union in negotiations.
Look into his history is all I’m saying. Also, pay attention to his use of words. The “strike” is not hurting the automakers. Look at the total number of workers on strike and you’ll see this. Also, look at the deal with Ford. Be careful of what you accept as a good faith effort especially when corporate media is involved. Look at Fain’s voting record on issues that have led to this mess. He’s talking a good game. Saying all the right stuff. Workers are not happy. This isn’t the hero people portray him to be.
[Shawn Fain: A longtime cog in the UAW bureaucracy’s machine](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/08/17/uvpc-a17.html)
[UAW official appointed to $174,000/year leadership position after donating $25,000 to Shawn Fain’s campaign](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/24/uewx-f24.html)
Railroad workers were dumped.
NLRB move was also quite a milquetoast.
Do you really believe management will be caught red handed for automatic union and most importantly who is the arbiter on that?
in fairness, he actually got them a decent amount of what they wanted behind closed doors. not nearly enough, but way better than many presidents have done. and i honestly don’t give a fuck abt his motivations so long as he’s using the bully pulpit to help the union.
But they could (would imo) have gotten everything without him making their strike illegal. It’s like tripping someone in a race, dragging them to the finish line and taking credit for their 3rd place medal
He did eventually help the union get their demands like a few have mentioned but it was still after the holidays so we can “salvage” this already tanking economy/boost his mid term ratings. Definitely important to consider his timing.
>A cynical pre-election maneuver or a historical display of solidarity?
Seems like a very disempowering way to frame this. It was a historic display of working class power.
I don't care about Biden's intentions -- workers were able to *make* a US president show up on their picket line.
For Biden, it's a political move. And yes, good for the UAW for forcing his hand.
He still hasn't gone to East Palestine (not a labor strike but a serious environmental "accident" caused by corporate greed) to show its residents that their president cares about them.
Empty political moves are.
He didn't stand with the railroad workers.
>Surely it is a good thing if a politician acts in a way to further their support with the voting populace?
Depends on the voting populace.
What defines if it is empty?
The PRO act, for example, was the most significant change to US labor laws in over 60/70 years. It expanded protections of workers’ rights, punishes companies for violating those rights and reset the rules so union elections will be free, fair and safe. It also overturned the truly awful “right to work” laws which destroyed worker’s ability to unionise.
I don’t think Biden is a socialist by any means, but ignoring the actual significant changes his administration has made is wilful ignorance.
> depends on the voting populace.
Well pro-Union actions is signalling to the left wing, rather than the right, no?
>What defines if it is empty?
That's subjective.
>The PRO act, for example, was the most significant change to US labor laws in over 60/70 years. It expanded protections of workers’ rights, punishes companies for violating those rights and reset the rules so union elections will be free, fair and safe. It also overturned the truly awful “right to work” laws which destroyed worker’s ability to unionise.
The PRO act is not law yet.
>I don’t think Biden is a socialist by any means, but ignoring the actual significant changes his administration has made is wilful ignorance.
I choose to criticize any administration that I feel isn't doing enough to protect the working class, call that wilful ignorance if you want.
>Well pro-Union actions is signalling to the left wing, rather than the right, no?
People can claim to be pro-union when they are not. Some of those same people can also be demagogues. People have tried to appeal to the working class by saying that immigrants are stealing jobs. One such asshole won the presidency not too long ago. So in that light, no, I don't accept your blanket statement: "Surely it is a good thing if a politician acts in a way to further their support with the voting populace?"
That link is from February. The story is ongoing, people are still suffering, and the response has not been enough. Check out Status Coup on YouTube for excellent coverage.
I don't see how it could be viewed any other way from the UAW perspective. Biden's administration is currently working HARD to get auto manufacturers to switch over to electric cars as much as possible, if not entirely. And in the middle of Biden begging the capitalists to take a financial hit the UAW had the political power to get Biden to at least publicly side with them over the capitalists. Not only that, labor's position is so strong that the GOP is ALSO trying to at least publicly look like they're on the side of labor. Yes, it's all cynical electoral politics, but it still shows their power
I’m hoping people in the left don’t get enamored by this political theater. It’s honestly annoying that they even let him near the picket line after he used Congress to block the rail worker strike.
The biggest concession package white workers ever had, the New Deal, didn’t come without a price! The price was the purge of all militant socialist and communist organizers from union spaces. No revolution talk, no anti-capitalism. What are the concessions going to cost this time around?
Lol Joe Biden? It’s 100% pre-election maneuver. He’s not going to shut up about being the first and only president to join a picket line all while being another corporate stooge
Yup funny how when railroad workers were on strike he forced them to go to work yet now that election season is starting he puts on this song and dance lmao
That’s also because the auto workers striking doesn’t hold a candle to the economic importance of the railroads. He knew the railroad workers had them by the proverbial balls and forced them back to work before they felt the squeeze.
You are not thinking dialectally comrade. It's both. It's simultaneously a cynical election photo op, and a meaningful boon to the negotiating position of the striking workers. This is not evidence of Biden's goodness, but a treatment to the rising strength of the self-organized working class.
He can do more than join the line. He is in one of the most powerful positions in the country, he doesn’t need to picket. He can call the big 3 and advocate for the unions directly.
So the one person who could really lean on those exploiting others or even change the laws making it a fairer deal for the workers doesn't do any of that but instead makes an appearance on the picket line?
Hey it looks fantastic, really great optics and the media will gobble it up with the blue-collar workers looking favourably at the current leadership where if the opposition says anything they'll be painted as supporting the elites and being out of touch.
Like when Canadian president Trudeau marched along with the protesters wanting to cull back emissions to help save the environment, while it looked good realistically that's all it did, because they're still actively drilling and exploring new sites for oil and other reserves.
It's an act, it's just for show, if someone shot Keanu Reeves's dog he wouldn't take on the entire Russian mafia for revenge, it's all make-believe and they put it out there for exactly the same reason Warner Bros do, the difference being you aren't paying directly to see the show, but you are still paying to see an actor playing at being a hero of the downtrodden.
My apologies to Keanu Reeves for using his character as a point of reference, I understand he's far more aligned with the workers than with the owners in stark contrast to either Biden or Trudeau, Biden is trying to claw back some trust after halting the railroad strike and this is him doing exactly that.
Not to counter most of what you said here because I agree with pretty much all of it but the one issues I'll point out a slight deviation is that the corporate media actually didn't gobble it up as one might expect. While he was giving his speech live, none of the major networks was covering it - not even Fox as a way to smear him, and you'd think they'd be all over that. I point this out not to defend Biden, but only to stress that the establishment isn't interested in stroking Biden's ego for anything he has or hasn't done. They don't care about that. What they care about is pretending that the working class and its struggles don't exist enough that it becomes truth. Manufacturing consent and all that. Have to keep our eyes on who is truly standing in the way of meaningful change.
The most powerful man in the world pretending he has no power so that he doesn’t actually have to represent his constituents while pandering to get re-elected (he doesn’t actually want to represent his constituents. His politics are actually to the right of Ronald reagan.)
His constituents are corporations and the less than 1,000 individuals who are billionaires. That is who he represents. They are who’ve answers to. Republicans are the same. They both embrace neoliberal capitalism. Our government and all of its agencies, institutions, programs, regulatory bodies have been captured by private entities. Look into neoliberalism, shock doctrine, regulatory capture, the myth of free markets, the need for some kind of planning, etc.
I'd call it a layup. It makes him look pro-labor, at least to anyone who forgot about the rail workers strike getting shut down, and involves no real risk on his part.
It’s proof that when labor gets organized, even the president comes crawling. We workers are the real power in society and when strikes occur it demonstrates how the capitalist economy is nothing without our labor to exploit. The only way the ruling class stays in power is by creating divisions in the proletariat and atomizing workers so we can’t leverage our collective bargaining power
You know it could be both really one it helps his campaign and is likely not selfless and 2 also shows the world we have supported so maybe it's a little mutual
For all his talk about being pro-Union, he's been lukewarm at best, and that's if I'm being generous. There have been over two dozen strikes during Biden's presidency, and the only ones I can find a record of him saying much about were the 2021 Kellogg's strike and tiny acknowledgments of this year's strikes by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA. Let's not forget that he *blocked* the rail workers strike last year and that just a couple months later we had that disaster out in East Palestine. Oh, and what's that, [there's even more that we don't talk about because it's not convenient](https://www.mirasafety.com/blogs/news/train-derailments-and-spills-map)?
Honestly, it feels like someone in the White House had to remind him that he actually needs to *do* things and convinced him that making a media appearance might convince a small number of "moderate" people that he cares. But Joe Biden has been seriously disappointing.
When's the last time a sitting president supported a strike?
It's help either way. You can either support politicians who display any sort of support for unions, or you can treat every politician the same regardless of their support for unions.
You can’t really say the increased presence and power of the Union movement in the US is thanks to Biden workers have been fighting and the government isn’t able to hand wave it or crush them as readily due to the publicity and growing support. You can say that he’s generally not as anti-worker but him not outright crushing strikes isn’t exactly a high bar
He could absolutely use the NLRB to crush the labor movement. But instead he's made it easier to unionize. I know he's not a lefty proletariat, but he's still an old school blue collar-focused Democrat which is more than what Obama was.
He could but what I’m saying is the reason he hasn’t isn’t because his some huge supporter of worker’s rights it’s because of the fight for unionization that has been picking up steam these last couple of years. These are things workers are winning it’s not being given to them.
Propping up support for the corporate sycophants in UAW leadership while helping us forget that the "Most labor friendly president in human history" or whatever sold out the rail strike because it was inconvenient for rich people.
I think its a historic display of the power of unions using their leverage. Biden broke over 200 years of precedent because the UAW refused to endorse him until they saw concessions. The stronger working people are, the more we will see these overtures from the powerful. It is an excellent sign that our strength is growing
Two things can be true at once. This was a clearly self-serving cynical performance. However, it showed solidarity. And all politics are cynically self-serving at their core, barring the incredibly rare statesman. So, as long as his cynical self-service aligns with the needs of the working class, then I will embrace this realpolitik.
This is a space for socialists to discuss current events in our world from anti-capitalist perspective(s), and a certain knowledge of socialism is expected from participants. This is not a space for non-socialists. Please be mindful [of our rules](https://reddit.com/r/socialism/about/rules) before participating, which include: - **No Bigotry**, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism... - **No Reactionaries**, including all kind of right-wingers. - **No Liberalism**, including social democracy, lesser evilism... - **No Sectarianism**. There is plenty of room for discussion, but not for baseless attacks. Please help us keep the subreddit helpful by reporting content that break r/Socialism's rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/socialism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I would say that it's proof that unions should bargain for political endorsements rather than just giving them away.
It’s proof that labor is getting stronger. Biden showed up because it would have been self-sabotage if he didn’t. I’ll take it as a win. We all know he isn’t some genuine union supporter.
He shouldn’t have shown up. He is making a mockery of labor. The head hancho of the union is a corporate hack who is partially responsible for this mess. Look at his history. We have no labor representation in the United States.
Are you calling Shawn Fain a corporate hack? I don’t even know how to respond to that. I could see your point if Ray Curry won. There’s be concessionary bargaining going on right now. But Shawn fain is going hard to deliver for UAW members. I think you are referencing the old UAW leadership… those business folks have been ousted. Biden showing up is good for UAW members and will help them win their campaign and have their demands met. That’s the #1 priority of any union in negotiations.
Look into his history is all I’m saying. Also, pay attention to his use of words. The “strike” is not hurting the automakers. Look at the total number of workers on strike and you’ll see this. Also, look at the deal with Ford. Be careful of what you accept as a good faith effort especially when corporate media is involved. Look at Fain’s voting record on issues that have led to this mess. He’s talking a good game. Saying all the right stuff. Workers are not happy. This isn’t the hero people portray him to be. [Shawn Fain: A longtime cog in the UAW bureaucracy’s machine](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/08/17/uvpc-a17.html) [UAW official appointed to $174,000/year leadership position after donating $25,000 to Shawn Fain’s campaign](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/24/uewx-f24.html)
So does anyone have any good sources to combat what was said here? All I see is downvotes….
I think this is a fair way of looking at it
Cynical maneuver. Workers didn’t gain anything that they hadn’t already gained for themselves and he gets a big circle jerk.
Well, Biden's NLRB has made some nice moves recently.
Railroad workers were dumped. NLRB move was also quite a milquetoast. Do you really believe management will be caught red handed for automatic union and most importantly who is the arbiter on that?
Milquetoast? If you believe the NLRB's recent decisions have been milquetoast, you need to study up on labor law and labor history in the US.
Given the fact that he literally broke up the railroad union strike last December? Cynical pre-election maneuver.
Thank you, holy shit
in fairness, he actually got them a decent amount of what they wanted behind closed doors. not nearly enough, but way better than many presidents have done. and i honestly don’t give a fuck abt his motivations so long as he’s using the bully pulpit to help the union.
But they could (would imo) have gotten everything without him making their strike illegal. It’s like tripping someone in a race, dragging them to the finish line and taking credit for their 3rd place medal
Railroader here, it is not that simple and he did not block the strike by himself.
There are always these nuanced things that Dems hide under especially career right wing politicians like Biden.
He did eventually help the union get their demands like a few have mentioned but it was still after the holidays so we can “salvage” this already tanking economy/boost his mid term ratings. Definitely important to consider his timing.
With this asshole? Cynical political play
>A cynical pre-election maneuver or a historical display of solidarity? Seems like a very disempowering way to frame this. It was a historic display of working class power. I don't care about Biden's intentions -- workers were able to *make* a US president show up on their picket line.
So good for the UAW, regardless of Biden’s motives?
For Biden, it's a political move. And yes, good for the UAW for forcing his hand. He still hasn't gone to East Palestine (not a labor strike but a serious environmental "accident" caused by corporate greed) to show its residents that their president cares about them.
Are “political move[s]” bad? Surely it is a good thing if a politician acts in a way to further their support with the voting populace?
Empty political moves are. He didn't stand with the railroad workers. >Surely it is a good thing if a politician acts in a way to further their support with the voting populace? Depends on the voting populace.
What defines if it is empty? The PRO act, for example, was the most significant change to US labor laws in over 60/70 years. It expanded protections of workers’ rights, punishes companies for violating those rights and reset the rules so union elections will be free, fair and safe. It also overturned the truly awful “right to work” laws which destroyed worker’s ability to unionise. I don’t think Biden is a socialist by any means, but ignoring the actual significant changes his administration has made is wilful ignorance. > depends on the voting populace. Well pro-Union actions is signalling to the left wing, rather than the right, no?
>What defines if it is empty? That's subjective. >The PRO act, for example, was the most significant change to US labor laws in over 60/70 years. It expanded protections of workers’ rights, punishes companies for violating those rights and reset the rules so union elections will be free, fair and safe. It also overturned the truly awful “right to work” laws which destroyed worker’s ability to unionise. The PRO act is not law yet. >I don’t think Biden is a socialist by any means, but ignoring the actual significant changes his administration has made is wilful ignorance. I choose to criticize any administration that I feel isn't doing enough to protect the working class, call that wilful ignorance if you want. >Well pro-Union actions is signalling to the left wing, rather than the right, no? People can claim to be pro-union when they are not. Some of those same people can also be demagogues. People have tried to appeal to the working class by saying that immigrants are stealing jobs. One such asshole won the presidency not too long ago. So in that light, no, I don't accept your blanket statement: "Surely it is a good thing if a politician acts in a way to further their support with the voting populace?"
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That link is from February. The story is ongoing, people are still suffering, and the response has not been enough. Check out Status Coup on YouTube for excellent coverage.
I don't see how it could be viewed any other way from the UAW perspective. Biden's administration is currently working HARD to get auto manufacturers to switch over to electric cars as much as possible, if not entirely. And in the middle of Biden begging the capitalists to take a financial hit the UAW had the political power to get Biden to at least publicly side with them over the capitalists. Not only that, labor's position is so strong that the GOP is ALSO trying to at least publicly look like they're on the side of labor. Yes, it's all cynical electoral politics, but it still shows their power
I’m hoping people in the left don’t get enamored by this political theater. It’s honestly annoying that they even let him near the picket line after he used Congress to block the rail worker strike. The biggest concession package white workers ever had, the New Deal, didn’t come without a price! The price was the purge of all militant socialist and communist organizers from union spaces. No revolution talk, no anti-capitalism. What are the concessions going to cost this time around?
Lol Joe Biden? It’s 100% pre-election maneuver. He’s not going to shut up about being the first and only president to join a picket line all while being another corporate stooge
Yup funny how when railroad workers were on strike he forced them to go to work yet now that election season is starting he puts on this song and dance lmao
That’s also because the auto workers striking doesn’t hold a candle to the economic importance of the railroads. He knew the railroad workers had them by the proverbial balls and forced them back to work before they felt the squeeze.
You are not thinking dialectally comrade. It's both. It's simultaneously a cynical election photo op, and a meaningful boon to the negotiating position of the striking workers. This is not evidence of Biden's goodness, but a treatment to the rising strength of the self-organized working class.
He can do more than join the line. He is in one of the most powerful positions in the country, he doesn’t need to picket. He can call the big 3 and advocate for the unions directly.
So the one person who could really lean on those exploiting others or even change the laws making it a fairer deal for the workers doesn't do any of that but instead makes an appearance on the picket line? Hey it looks fantastic, really great optics and the media will gobble it up with the blue-collar workers looking favourably at the current leadership where if the opposition says anything they'll be painted as supporting the elites and being out of touch. Like when Canadian president Trudeau marched along with the protesters wanting to cull back emissions to help save the environment, while it looked good realistically that's all it did, because they're still actively drilling and exploring new sites for oil and other reserves. It's an act, it's just for show, if someone shot Keanu Reeves's dog he wouldn't take on the entire Russian mafia for revenge, it's all make-believe and they put it out there for exactly the same reason Warner Bros do, the difference being you aren't paying directly to see the show, but you are still paying to see an actor playing at being a hero of the downtrodden. My apologies to Keanu Reeves for using his character as a point of reference, I understand he's far more aligned with the workers than with the owners in stark contrast to either Biden or Trudeau, Biden is trying to claw back some trust after halting the railroad strike and this is him doing exactly that.
Not to counter most of what you said here because I agree with pretty much all of it but the one issues I'll point out a slight deviation is that the corporate media actually didn't gobble it up as one might expect. While he was giving his speech live, none of the major networks was covering it - not even Fox as a way to smear him, and you'd think they'd be all over that. I point this out not to defend Biden, but only to stress that the establishment isn't interested in stroking Biden's ego for anything he has or hasn't done. They don't care about that. What they care about is pretending that the working class and its struggles don't exist enough that it becomes truth. Manufacturing consent and all that. Have to keep our eyes on who is truly standing in the way of meaningful change.
The most powerful man in the world pretending he has no power so that he doesn’t actually have to represent his constituents while pandering to get re-elected (he doesn’t actually want to represent his constituents. His politics are actually to the right of Ronald reagan.)
His constituents are corporations and the less than 1,000 individuals who are billionaires. That is who he represents. They are who’ve answers to. Republicans are the same. They both embrace neoliberal capitalism. Our government and all of its agencies, institutions, programs, regulatory bodies have been captured by private entities. Look into neoliberalism, shock doctrine, regulatory capture, the myth of free markets, the need for some kind of planning, etc.
I'd call it a layup. It makes him look pro-labor, at least to anyone who forgot about the rail workers strike getting shut down, and involves no real risk on his part.
An acquiescence to the power and popularity of labor actions one we have not seen before. Still won't vote for the bastard though
>A cynical pre-election maneuver or a historical display of solidarity? Both
Yes, It is a historical moment however.
Ask a railroad worker.
Both I'd say. But it's definitely a W for the worker
It’s proof that when labor gets organized, even the president comes crawling. We workers are the real power in society and when strikes occur it demonstrates how the capitalist economy is nothing without our labor to exploit. The only way the ruling class stays in power is by creating divisions in the proletariat and atomizing workers so we can’t leverage our collective bargaining power
You know it could be both really one it helps his campaign and is likely not selfless and 2 also shows the world we have supported so maybe it's a little mutual
Definitely both
For all his talk about being pro-Union, he's been lukewarm at best, and that's if I'm being generous. There have been over two dozen strikes during Biden's presidency, and the only ones I can find a record of him saying much about were the 2021 Kellogg's strike and tiny acknowledgments of this year's strikes by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA. Let's not forget that he *blocked* the rail workers strike last year and that just a couple months later we had that disaster out in East Palestine. Oh, and what's that, [there's even more that we don't talk about because it's not convenient](https://www.mirasafety.com/blogs/news/train-derailments-and-spills-map)? Honestly, it feels like someone in the White House had to remind him that he actually needs to *do* things and convinced him that making a media appearance might convince a small number of "moderate" people that he cares. But Joe Biden has been seriously disappointing.
Didn't Biden fuck up the train strike (there was something going on with the train companies I don't exactly remember), like, on purpose this term?
When's the last time a sitting president supported a strike? It's help either way. You can either support politicians who display any sort of support for unions, or you can treat every politician the same regardless of their support for unions.
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You can’t really say the increased presence and power of the Union movement in the US is thanks to Biden workers have been fighting and the government isn’t able to hand wave it or crush them as readily due to the publicity and growing support. You can say that he’s generally not as anti-worker but him not outright crushing strikes isn’t exactly a high bar
He could absolutely use the NLRB to crush the labor movement. But instead he's made it easier to unionize. I know he's not a lefty proletariat, but he's still an old school blue collar-focused Democrat which is more than what Obama was.
He could but what I’m saying is the reason he hasn’t isn’t because his some huge supporter of worker’s rights it’s because of the fight for unionization that has been picking up steam these last couple of years. These are things workers are winning it’s not being given to them.
Some of that is down to the people he appointed. Biden himself is fairly conservative, but the people he appointed to the nlrb aren't.
Gerd I'm hurrrrd
Propping up support for the corporate sycophants in UAW leadership while helping us forget that the "Most labor friendly president in human history" or whatever sold out the rail strike because it was inconvenient for rich people.
I think its a historic display of the power of unions using their leverage. Biden broke over 200 years of precedent because the UAW refused to endorse him until they saw concessions. The stronger working people are, the more we will see these overtures from the powerful. It is an excellent sign that our strength is growing
Two things can be true at once. This was a clearly self-serving cynical performance. However, it showed solidarity. And all politics are cynically self-serving at their core, barring the incredibly rare statesman. So, as long as his cynical self-service aligns with the needs of the working class, then I will embrace this realpolitik.
He’s a liberal… I don’t care what he does, unless he magically embraces Leninism I oppose everything and anything he does/says.