Biden Is Pandering to the 1 Percent: Union Manufacturing WorkersLess than 1 percent of American workers are union members in manufacturing jobs. But you'd never know that by watching our politics.
Eric Boehm | 9.26.2023 7:00 AM
President Joe Biden plans to travel to Michigan on Tuesday, where he will speak in support of striking autoworkers and become the first American president to walk a picket line.
It's too soon to tell whether Biden's support will have much of an effect on the impasse between the so-called Big Three automakers (Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, the international conglomerate that owns the remnants of Chrysler) and the United Auto Workers (UAW), the union that called the strike earlier this month. Politically, however, the White House is framing the event as the ultimate show of solidarity from the pro-union president.
You might also think about it as something else: Joe Biden's stand for the 1 percent.
That's roughly the percentage of the American workforce that is unionized and employed in manufacturing. Far from being a broad-based signal of support for blue-collar Americans, Biden's advocacy on behalf of the UAW this week will be performative shilling for a mere sliver of the country's workers. ...
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