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      Will Biden’s Recent Victories Lift the Democrats?

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      More from our inbox:What’s Better, an After-School Program or a Job?President Biden is still one of the most unpopular presidents in modern history, despite his political victories.Yuri Gripas for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Biden Basks in String of Wins. Will This Be a Turning Point?” (news analysis, front page, Aug. 9):The president’s legislative agenda, a close approximation to the one promised, has passed. These are accomplishments, not rhetorical speculations. That the president has low ratings at this juncture speaks volumes not about him — he has delivered, and in under two years — but about the fuzzy-thinking electorate surveyed by pollsters.Yes, voters are perennially concerned about their purchasing power and the brutal effects of inflation. Americans need to be reminded that presidents do not bring inflation with them to the White House. A complex set of global problems — including a war, a pandemic and supply chain problems — contribute to a disrupted economy.Americans would do well in this historic moment to stop and smell the proverbial roses: We, as a country, have finally acted on climate change. And drug pricing. And infrastructure. And, incredibly, guns. Much remains to be done on all these fronts. Nothing is perfect, though voters polled seem disappointed that all their wishes don’t come true on Election Day.President Biden’s poll numbers are low, but let us take a poll of climate activists, people struggling with the cost of drugs, those who understand the truly herculean effort it took to pass the Inflation Reduction Act bill. Would his numbers be higher? I’ll go out on a limb and say they would triple.Will SouthColumbia, S.C.To the Editor:As a Democrat who had previously been disillusioned with President Biden’s commitment to working with Congress in a bipartisan manner, I found the legislative and economic accomplishments noted in this article reassuring and worth celebrating.However, they may not mark a turnaround for the Biden presidency, especially with respect to the coming midterm elections. We can simply revisit the first two years of the Obama administration to see why.Barack Obama’s legislative, economic and judicial achievements through the second year of his presidency are comparable, if not more remarkable, than those of Mr. Biden. By August 2010, Mr. Obama had already nominated two Supreme Court justices, passed Dodd-Frank and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and signed into law what was arguably his crowning piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act.But, as we all know, he and the Democrats suffered substantial losses in the midterm elections of 2010.So, is Joe Biden on a legislative hot streak? Yes. But will it play to his advantage during the midterms? History suggests otherwise.Ravin BhatiaBrookline, Mass.What’s Better, an After-School Program or a Job? BjelicaS/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “The Best Extracurricular Is a Job” by Pamela Paul (column, July 31):Ms. Paul is right to lament the decline in the number of teenagers who work after school. Teens who work can learn valuable things about themselves and work life that are not readily available otherwise.Where Ms. Paul goes wrong is in playing down extracurricular and after-school activities. After-school experiences help teens develop soft skills and self-confidence. They also provide credentials for getting good jobs down the road.In my research, I spoke with dozens of human resources professionals who had conducted mock job interviews with teens who had participated in after-school programs.The professionals were impressed with the experiences and skills that the teens had acquired and considered many of them to be hirable, even without a history of paid employment. In particular, after-school programs provide opportunities for teens to develop complex leadership skills, something they can rarely do at work.Teens need sequences of after-school programs and work experiences that build on each other, providing the best of both worlds.Bart HirschEvanston, Ill.The writer is professor emeritus of human development and social policy at Northwestern University, and the author of “Job Skills and Minority Youth: New Program Directions.” More

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      United Auto Workers Seek to Shed a Legacy of Corruption

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      After his predecessors’ imprisonment, the union’s president is being challenged for re-election in the first direct vote by its membership.DETROIT — For the United Auto Workers, the last five years have been one of the most troubling chapters in the union’s storied history.A federal investigation found widespread corruption, with a dozen senior officials, including two former presidents, convicted of embezzling more than $1 million in union funds for luxury travel and other lavish personal expenses. Since last year, the union has been under the scrutiny of a court-appointed monitor charged with ensuring that anticorruption reforms are carried out.The scandal tarnished a once-powerful organization and left many of its 400,000 active members angry and disillusioned.“You bet I’m mad,” said Bill Bagwell, who has been in the U.A.W. for 37 years and works at a General Motors parts warehouse in Ypsilanti, Mich., represented by Local 174. “That was our money, the workers’ money. I don’t like people stealing our money.”Now U.A.W. members have a chance to determine how much of a break from that past they want to make. In one of the changes prompted by the corruption scandal, the union this year will choose its leaders through a direct election — its first. Until now, the president and other senior officials were chosen by delegates to a convention, a system in which the union’s executive board could shape the outcome through favors and favoritism, and the results did not always reflect the views of the rank and file.“Everyone in power is in one party, and it’s been like that forever,” said William Parker, a retired worker who is eligible to vote and hopes to see a new slate of officers take over. “But now we’ve got one man, one vote, and we are mobilizing to change.”Over four days last week, at a sometimes-chaotic convention in Detroit, some 900 delegates debated a wide range of issues facing the union. Four members were nominated to challenge the incumbent president, Ray Curry, in the fall election. Under rules approved by the delegates, the union’s nearly 600,000 retirees can vote but cannot run for executive offices. If no candidate wins at least 50 percent of the vote, the top two will vie in a runoff.The convention proceedings dragged out each day as members stepped to microphones to offer motions, objections and requests for clarifications. A day after voting to increase stipends for striking workers to $500 a week from $400, they rescinded the move. At least three times Mr. Curry was scheduled to give a state-of-the-union address only to have the extended debates force postponements, and the convention adjourned without his address.Mr. Curry is seen as a strong favorite for re-election. He has held senior posts for more than a decade and became president in 2021 in the fallout from the corruption scandal. One potentially serious challenger is Shawn Fain, an electrician who has been a U.A.W. member for 28 years and holds a post with the union’s headquarters staff. He is part of a slate of candidates for senior posts, and is backed by a dissident group, Unite All Workers for Democracy, which has raised tens of thousands of dollars for the election campaign.Shawn Fain, a U.A.W. member for 28 years, is a potentially serious challenger for the union presidency.Sarah Rice for The New York Times“Members have to believe in the leadership and believe that the corruption is behind us,” Mr. Fain said.The other candidates are Brian Keller, a quality worker at Stellantis who for years has run a Facebook group critical of the union’s leadership; Will Lehman, a worker at a Mack Truck plant in Pennsylvania; and Mark Gibson, a chairman at Local 163 in Westland, Mich. Read More on Organized Labor in the U.S.Apple: Employees at a Baltimore-area Apple store voted to unionize, making it the first of the company’s 270-plus U.S. stores to do so. The result provides a foothold for a budding movement among Apple retail employees.Starbucks: When a Rhodes scholar joined Starbucks in 2020, none of the company’s 9,000 U.S. locations had a union. She hoped to change that by helping to unionize its stores in Buffalo. Improbably, she and her co-workers have far exceeded their goal.Amazon: A little-known independent union scored a stunning victory at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island. But unlike at Starbucks, where organizing efforts spread in a matter of weeks, unionizing workers at Amazon has been a longer, messier slog.A Shrinking Movement: Although high-profile unionization efforts have dominated headlines recently, union membership has seen a decades-long decline in the United States.The challengers and Mr. Curry agree on most of the key issues at stake in next year’s contract negotiations. Members want automakers to resume cost-of-living wage adjustments, once a key element of U.A.W. contracts, and eliminate compensation differences between newer and more senior workers. Workers hired in 2007 or earlier earn the full U.A.W. wage of about $32 an hour and are guaranteed pensions. Workers hired after 2007 have started at lower wages and can work up to the top wage over five years. They get a 401(k) retirement account instead of a pension.Dorian Fenderson, a U.A.W. member at a G.M. location in Warren, Mich., started a year ago as a temporary worker at $17 an hour and after four months was made a permanent hire, making $22 an hour.“There are people making $34 doing the same work as me,” he said. “I know they’ve been here a long time, but it’s not really fair to people like me.”The opposition candidates have called for the U.A.W. to take a more confrontational line in contract negotiations to win back concessions now that the manufacturers are solidly profitable, and to push them to keep more production in the United States and use more union labor. G.M. is building four battery plants in a joint venture, and Ford Motor is building three with its own partner. The union will have an opportunity to organize those plants, but success is not guaranteed.“We are hemorrhaging jobs, and that has to stop,” Mr. Fain said.Mr. Curry said he was confident that battery plants would be organized and that the workers would be covered by U.A.W. contracts with the automakers. He said similar joint ventures had been represented by the union in the past, and noted that current contracts assign engine production to the U.A.W.“Our belief is that batteries are the powertrains of electric vehicles,” he said in an interview. “It’s just new technology. We have a right to negotiate that and establish those locations.”One potential weakness for Mr. Curry could be recent actions that have riled some members. He and members of his executive board recently increased pay and pensions for themselves and others working at the union’s headquarters. A vice president who is running for re-election spent $95,000 in union funds on backpacks that were embroidered with his name and were to be given to members at union gatherings, a move that could be seen as using union money for his campaign.In a July report, the court-appointed monitor, Neil Barofsky, wrote that he had 19 open investigations into possible improprieties, and said Mr. Curry’s leadership group had been uncooperative at times. Mr. Barofsky, a lawyer at a New York firm, wrote that the union’s leaders had uncovered mishandling of union funds by a senior official but that they had concealed the matter, though he added that cooperation and transparency had improved in recent months.Mr. Curry said that once he learned of the communications issues with the monitor, he stepped in and addressed the matter.“You have to read report to the end, and at the end the monitor talks about true transparency, response time, and change in counsel, the steps we have taken to shows we are moving in a positive direction,” he said. “And I’ve asked the monitor, if he has issues, to come directly to me so I don’t read about it in a report four months later.”Mr. Barofsky declined to comment beyond the findings in his report.Decades ago, the U.A.W. was a powerful organization that could influence presidential elections and consistently won increases in wages and benefits, often through hard-nosed negotiating and strikes. Its contracts with G.M., Ford and Chrysler set standards that helped pull up pay and benefits for working classes all around the country, union and nonunion alike.Mr. Fain’s grandfather kept his first Chrysler pay stub from 1937. For decades, the U.A.W.’s contracts with automakers set the standards for pay and benefits for the working class.Sarah Rice for The New York TimesBut its fortunes waned as the Detroit automakers steadily reduced their U.S. operations and struggled to compete as Toyota, Honda, Nissan and other foreign automakers built nonunion plants across the South. The 2009 bankruptcy filings by G.M. and Chrysler forced the union into once-unthinkable concessions, including the two-tier wage structure.Over the last 10 years, the automakers have rebounded, often with record earnings, and union workers have benefited. Last year, G.M. paid a profit-sharing bonus of $10,250 to each of its U.A.W. employees. But on other fronts, the union is still in retreat. A 40-day strike in 2019 was unable to prevent G.M. from closing a plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and workers have gone without cost-of-living adjustments to their wages since 2009.The corruption investigation was started around 2014 by the U.S. attorney in Detroit, and eventually found schemes that embezzled more than $1.5 million from membership dues and $3.5 million from training centers. Top union officials used the money for expensive cigars, wines, liquor, golf clubs, apparel and luxury travel.More than a dozen U.A.W. officials pleaded guilty. As part of a consent decree to settle the investigation, the U.S. District Court in Detroit appointed Mr. Barofsky to monitor the U.A.W.’s efforts to become more democratic and transparent.In July, a former U.A.W. president, Gary Jones, was released from federal prison after serving less than nine months of a 28-month sentence. Another former leader, Dennis Williams, served nine months of his 21-month sentence. Other convicted officials were also released after serving less than half of their sentences.At the convention last week, the shortened sentences were a source of frustration for many attendees, but as the proceedings pressed on, many backed the positions of Mr. Curry and the current executive board on issues that arose.David Hendershot, a forklift driver at a Ford plant in Rawsonville, Mich., said that he wanted the union to push for higher wages in contract talks next year, and that he wasn’t happy with the corruption that took place. But he isn’t sure he wants a wholesale change in leadership. “I’ll probably stick with what we’ve got,” he said. More

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      These Republican Governors Are Delivering Results, and Many Voters Like Them for It

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      Republican flamethrowers and culture warriors like Donald Trump and Representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene typically draw an outsize amount of media attention.Americans may conclude from this that there is a striking, and perhaps unfortunate, relationship between extremism and political success.But Republicans aren’t hoping for a red wave in the midterms only because norm-thrashing or scandal sells. The truth is much more banal — yet also important for parties to internalize and better for politics generally: In states across the country, Republican governors are delivering real results for people they are physically more proximate to than federal officials.Now, it’s true that the party that controls the presidency nearly always gets whipped in midterm elections, and inflation would be a huge drag on any party in power. And it’s also true that among those governors are culture warriors like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas.But people too often overlook the idea that actual results, especially ones related to pocketbook issues, can often be as important as rhetoric. Looked at that way, lots of Republicans — some with high public profiles, and some who fly below the radar — are excelling.Start with the simplest measure: popularity. Across the country, 13 of the 15 most popular governors are Republicans. That list does not just include red states. In fact, blue-state Republican governors like Phil Scott of Vermont, Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Larry Hogan of Maryland are among the most popular.There are many reasons that G.O.P. governors seem to be succeeding. It’s true that governors can’t take credit for everything. Sometimes they just get lucky. But they do make policy choices, and particularly those made by governors since the start of Covid have made a difference.For example, take a look at the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data on unemployment. In the 10 states with the lowest rates as of June, eight were led by Republican governors. Several governors who don’t make frequent appearances in national news stand out, like Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, Spencer Cox of Utah and Phil Scott of Vermont. Their states have unemployment rates under 2.5 percent, and of the 20 states with the lowest unemployment rates, just four are led by Democrats.States with Republican governors have also excelled in economic recovery since the start of the pandemic. Standouts in this measure include Mr. Abbott and Doug Ducey of Arizona.These results reflect many things — some states have grown and others have shrunk, for example — but are at least in part a result of policy choices made by their elected leaders since the start of the pandemic. For example, governors like Kristi Noem in South Dakota often rejected lockdowns and economic closures.Republican governors were also far more likely to get children back to in-person school, despite intense criticism.Covid policy doesn’t explain everything. Fiscal governance has also made a difference. The Cato Institute’s Fiscal Report Card on America’s governors for 2020 (the most recent edition available), which grades them on tax and spending records, gives high marks to many Republicans. Nearly all of the top-ranked states in this report have Republican governors, like Kim Reynolds of Iowa or Mr. Ricketts. (Some Democratic governors also ranked highly, including Steve Sisolak of Nevada and Roy Cooper of North Carolina.) Some have made their mark with employer-attracting tax cuts; others with spending controls; others with a mixture.Most states mandate a balanced budget, so taxing and spending policies are important for fiscal stability. Low taxes tend to attract and keep employers and employees. Restrained budgets help ensure that taxes can be kept low, without sacrificing bond ratings, which may matter if debt-financed spending is needed in a crisis or to try to stimulate businesses to hire more.Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas has cut taxes for individuals, reduced the number of tax brackets and cut the corporate income tax rate. Mr. Sununu has restrained spending, vetoed a payroll tax proposal and cut business taxes. Brian Kemp of Georgia, by contrast, actually paused some tax cuts that had been scheduled — and focused almost exclusively on spending restraint, issuing a directive for state agencies to generate budget cuts and keeping 2020 general fund growth to a tiny 1 percent.Even in blue Vermont, Mr. Scott has constrained general fund spending — despite being an odd duck out among governors in that he is not constrained by a balanced-budget amendment — to rise by an annual average of just 2.4 percent between 2017 and 2020, and he has also cut taxes. He signed a bill to ensure that the federal tax reform instituted under Mr. Trump and limiting state and local tax deductions wouldn’t result in Vermonters getting hammered. He has also cut individual income tax rates, reduced the number of tax brackets and resisted new payroll taxes in favor of voluntary paid leave plans for private-sector employers.Republicans who have a big impact on the day-to-day lives of many Americans — unlike, say, Representative Kevin McCarthy or certainly Mr. Trump, and in terms of the quality of state economies, the local job market and education — are delivering. In our federalist system, a lot of power still sits with states and not the federal government and determines much about citizens’ lives.This is a big reason that Republicans are well-positioned heading into the midterms. It should be a warning to Joe Biden and Democrats — and to some of the culture warriors. Cable-news combat over whatever the outrage of the day is may deliver politicians the spotlight. But sound economic policy and focusing on the job, not theatrics, is delivering basic day-to-day results Americans want, need and will reward.Liz Mair (@LizMair), a strategist for campaigns by Scott Walker, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry, is the founder and president of Mair Strategies.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      New York City Pulls Plug on Second Homeless Shelter in Chinatown

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      The Adams administration backtracked on the second shelter, one of three that had been proposed for the neighborhood, after protests from the community.For the second time in less than a week, New York City canceled plans on Monday for a shelter in Chinatown, where community opposition has complicated Mayor Eric Adams’s efforts to move homeless New Yorkers off the streets.The 94-bed shelter would have been in a closed hotel at the busy intersection of Grand Street and Bowery. The location is near where an Asian American woman was murdered in February in an attack for which a homeless man has been charged. The shelter’s would-be operator, Housing Works, had planned to allow illegal drugs in the building, a move that drew fierce condemnation from local residents.Both canceled shelters are of a specialized type known as safe havens or stabilization hotels, which offer more privacy and social services and fewer restrictions than traditional shelters. Mr. Adams announced plans last week to open at least 900 rooms in such shelters by mid-2023.The city Department of Homeless Services, which had previously said that the large street-homeless population in the neighborhood made it a crucial place to add shelter capacity, said on Monday that it would instead open a facility in an area with fewer services for the homeless.The department said in a statement, “Our goal is always to work with communities to understand their needs and equitably distribute shelters across all five boroughs to serve our most vulnerable New Yorkers.”This was the same reason that city offered last week when it announced it would not open the other Chinatown shelter, at 47 Madison Street.But uncertainty about which union’s workers would staff the shelter may have also played a role in the shelter’s cancellation.Charles King, the C.E.O. of Housing Works, said that the organization was required to use workers from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which represents Housing Works’ employees.But the powerful New York Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, which has close ties to the mayor and is better known as the Hotel Trades Council, said that it has an existing contract with the owner of the building, a former Best Western hotel, requiring the building to use its workers.“There’s only one contract with this building, and it’s ours,” said Rich Maroko, president of the Hotel Trades Council. Mr. King said that Housing Works proposed a compromise under which the building owner would hire eight Hotel Trades Council workers. But he said Gary Jenkins, the city commissioner of social services, who oversees the Department of Homeless Services, told him that the city was pulling the plug on the shelter at the Hotel Trades Council’s insistence.“It’s really clear to me that the mayor is more concerned about pleasing this one union than he is about addressing the needs of homeless people,” Mr. King said.The Department of Homeless Services did not respond to a request for comment on Mr. King’s assertion. Mr. Maroko said that the hotel union had urged City Hall not to go through with the shelter conversion.The R.W.D.S.U., which is in contentious contract negotiations with Housing Works, said for its part, “We have no desire to displace hotel workers or see this hotel converted.”During the 2021 mayoral campaign, the hotel union, which has nearly 40,000 members, gave Mr. Adams his first major labor endorsement. Susan Lee, founder of the Alliance for Community Preservation and Betterment, a Chinatown group that mobilized protests against the shelter, applauded the city for “listening to the concerns of the Chinatown community.”She said she hoped the hotel would reopen as a tourist hotel and help the neighborhood recover from the pandemic.Dana Rubinstein More

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      Labor’s Disenchantment in Ohio Puts Even Democratic Veterans at Risk

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      TOLEDO, Ohio — Representative Marcy Kaptur, the blue-collar daughter of this blue-collar city, is on the cusp of a milestone: If elected in November to her 21st term, she will become the longest-serving female member of Congress, breaking Barbara Mikulski’s combined House and Senate record.But for Ms. Kaptur, 75, a famously pro-union, old-school appropriator, the political ground has washed away beneath her feet. A new Republican-drawn district has robbed her of reliable Democratic votes on the outskirts of Cleveland. The national Democratic Party has saddled her with an agenda of phasing out internal combustion engines and the fossil fuels that power them that sits poorly in the region that put the first Jeeps into mass production.And Donald J. Trump rattled the underpinnings of Democratic appeal to labor, with his trade protectionism, thundering denunciations of China and professed belief in job creation at all cost.As Republican voters go to the polls on Tuesday to select Ms. Kaptur’s opponent for the fall election, some of her oldest, firmest allies in the union world are having their doubts — about Ms. Kaptur’s future, and more broadly, the future of the Democratic Party in the industrial heartland.“Listen, Marcy is a friend,” said Shaun Enright, executive secretary and business manager of the 17,000-strong Northwest Ohio Building Trades Council. “But I have to go to membership, whatever the election cycle is, and say, ‘This is the most important election of your life. You have to vote.’ And I’m tired of doing it. Members are tired of hearing it.”Ms. Kaptur’s longevity was supposed to underscore a truism that union families knew their friends and would not abandon them. Democratic senators like Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia have banked on it. Representative Tim Ryan is testing it with his run for an Ohio Senate seat that so far has revolved around blue-collar appeals.Mr. Trump would have won Ms. Kaptur’s newly drawn district by three percentage points, but in the parts that overlapped the old map, Ms. Kaptur outperformed Joseph R. Biden Jr. by six percentage points, giving some hope — at least numerically — that her name recognition, long record and general popularity could still deliver that 41st year in Congress.“My service has now afforded me the ability to make a difference,” she said in an interview, boasting of her seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee and her chairmanship of the subcommittee that doles out energy and water funding.Ms. Kaptur with President Biden last year. The national Democrats’ policy goals, especially on energy, are harder to sell in her district.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut her struggle to reach that historical mark attests to what Republicans and some union leaders here have been saying since the rise of Trumpism: Labor politics have changed forever. There are fewer union voters, and the ones who remain are less Democratic, said Jeff Broxmeyer, a political scientist at the University of Toledo. Since 1990, the percentage of Ohio workers represented by unions has slipped from 23.2 percent to 13 percent.“The organizational capacity of the Democratic Party in northwest Ohio is the organizational capacity of organized labor, and organized labor is much diminished,” he said. “Now we’re at the endgame.”The State of Jobs in the United StatesJob openings and the number of workers voluntarily leaving their positions in the United States remained near record levels in March.March Jobs Report: U.S. employers added 431,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent ​​in the third month of 2022.Job Market and Stocks: This year’s decline in stock prices follows a historical pattern: Hot labor markets and stocks often don’t mix well.New Career Paths: For some, the Covid-19 crisis presented an opportunity to change course. Here is how these six people pivoted professionally.Return to the Office: Many companies are loosening Covid safety rules, leaving people to navigate social distancing on their own. Some workers are concerned.The state legislature lopped off the tail of Ms. Kaptur’s oddly drawn district along Lake Erie — nicknamed the Snake on the Lake — then extended it west through rural Ohio to the Indiana border. That, Professor Broxmeyer said, signaled that Republicans “are coming for the last Democrat.”It was not that long ago, 2012, that Barack Obama won Ohio’s union families, 61 percent to Mitt Romney’s 37 percent. But Mr. Trump took 54 percent of those same voters in 2016, then 55 percent in 2020. While on the coasts, prognosticators fret over the former president’s continued hold on the Republican Party, in northwest Ohio, the party’s embrace of Trump-era protectionism, immigration exclusion and anti-environmentalism is cheered heartily.“A lot of those union workers, they’re not happy with their unions right now,” said Craig Riedel, a state representative running in the Republican primary to challenge Ms. Kaptur. “They realize that a lot of those union bosses, they’re part of the Democratic machine, and oftentimes, they’re looking at a political outlook of their unions that is in disalignment with their own.”Union leaders agree that it is becoming much more difficult to paper over disagreements between local Democrats and their national party when Trump-aligned Republican candidates are using the same anti-China, anti-trade rhetoric that Ohio Democrats use. Erika White, president of the Communications Workers of America local in northwest Ohio, said Mr. Trump had given voice to the anger of white workers, even if he did not deliver on his promises.Ms. White, who is Black, said she spends much of her time listening to the frustrations of the white men who make up about half of her union.“I personally cannot stand the guy, but you think of his persona,” she said of Mr. Trump. “Where people are, I don’t know if they’re afraid of accountability or where we’re headed, but instead of personal responsibility, they say, ‘I’d rather blame you for all my problems, and then not only am I going to blame you, I’m going to be mean and aggressive with it.’”Erika White, president of a union local, said Mr. Trump had given voice to the anger of white workers, even if he did not deliver on his promises.Cydni Elledge for The New York TimesMs. Kaptur sees it too, and sees Mr. Trump’s appeal, despite his failure to deliver tangible benefits.“Our party, for the most part, is very coastally oriented,” she said, adding, “Our part of the country just doesn’t have much voice, and so partly what he reflects is that vacuum of people feeling left out, and I can understand that.”In Toledo, a burning issue is a natural gas and crude oil pipeline called Line Five that runs on the floor of the Great Lakes from Canada to Ohio, supplying a refinery here that employs 1,200 union workers.The Democratic administration of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan has labeled it a “ticking time bomb” that needs to be shut down, and allies in the environmental movement say workers need to face reality: As the auto industry shifts to electric vehicles, oil pipelines and refineries will no longer be needed.But what national Democrats see as a planetary imperative, union leaders like Mr. Enright see as an immediate mortal threat, and they fully expect the politicians they back to fight for their jobs. That means keeping Line Five open and the shift to electric vehicles in the lowest possible gear.“Democrats say they’re the ones working on behalf of people’s pocketbooks, but how do I tell my members that’s the guy working to help your pocketbook when that’s the guy who is shutting down the pipeline to your refinery?” Mr. Enright asked.An issue like Line Five is easy for the Republicans in the race. It unites unions and business, without alienating any other constituency.Theresa Gavarone, a state senator, is a leading Republican in the campaign to run against Ms. Kaptur in the fall.Cydni Elledge for The New York Times“I mean, it’s 1,200 direct jobs, and thousands of indirect jobs, which include union workers in good paying jobs, and Marcy Kaptur has been silent,” said State Senator Theresa Gavarone, a leading Republican in the race, as she shook hands at Archbold High School in the rural west of the newly drawn district.Ms. Gavarone has used the Line Five issue to make allies in the building trades unions, and used those allies to separate herself from Mr. Riedel, who is openly anti-union.Ms. Kaptur responded defensively, but she also showed the crosscurrents she faces. As chairwoman of the Energy and Water Appropriations subcommittee, she said she had done what she could to protect and move to strengthen the pipeline. But she also leads the Great Lakes Caucus in the House, and protecting the largest body of freshwater on Earth, she said, also has to be a priority.That Mr. Trump never seemed bothered by such conflicts frustrates her, and she does not seem clear on how to overcome his appeal in a region drained by globalization and left behind, first by free trade, then by the changing priorities of environmental protection and an information and technology economy.But she is perfectly clear about her constituents’ point of view.“He was able to prick the despair that results from economic opportunity being jerked out from under you like a rug, and he was able to do it even though he didn’t do anything for them,” Ms. Kaptur fumed. “These are people who’ve worked hard all their lives, and then an earthquake happened. That’s not their fault, and largely Washington never saw it.” More

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      French Candidates’ Economic Programs Hold Key to the Election

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      Promising tax cuts, higher wages and changes in the retirement age, President Macron and Marine Le Pen vie for undecided voters.PARIS — As President Emmanuel Macron wove through crowds during a campaign stop in northern France last week, an elderly voter got in his face to protest one of his most unpopular economic proposals: raising the retirement age to 65 from 62 to fund France’s national pension system.“Retirement at 65, no, no!” the woman shouted, jabbing a finger at Mr. Macron’s chest as he tried to assuage her. The boisterous exchange was caught on camera. Two hours later, he retreated, saying he would consider tweaking the age to 64. “I don’t want to divide the country,” he said on French television.Mr. Macron’s reversal on a key element of his economic platform, in an industrial region backing the far-right firebrand Marine Le Pen ahead of France’s presidential election next Sunday, was a reminder of the social distress dominating the minds of voters. He and Ms. Le Pen have starkly divergent visions of how to address these concerns.As they cross the country in a whirlwind of last-minute campaigning, their runoff will hinge to a large extent on perceptions of the economy. Worries about widening economic insecurity, and the surging cost of living amid the fallout from Russia’s war on Ukraine, have become top issues in the race, ahead of security and immigration.Ms. Le Pen won by a comfortable margin in the first round of voting last Sunday in places that have lost jobs to deindustrialization, where she has found a ready audience for her pledges to bolster purchasing power, create employment through “intelligent” protectionism and shield France from European policies that expanded globalization.An open-air produce market in Paris, in December. Economic insecurity and the cost of living have become top issues for voters in the presidential runoff.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesWhile Mr. Macron is still expected to win in a tight race, workers in restless blue-collar bastions may yet prove a liability. Despite a robust recovery in France from Covid lockdowns — the economy is now growing at around 7 percent, and unemployment has fallen to a 10-year low of 7.4 percent — many feel inequality has widened, rather than narrowed, as he pledged, in the five years since Mr. Macron took office.After France’s traditional left-wing and right-wing parties collapsed in the first round of voting, both candidates are scrambling to lure the undecided and voters who gravitated to their opponents — especially the far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon — in large part by recasting major planks of their economic programs to appeal to those struggling to get by.Pensions is a case in point. Mr. Macron has worked to recalibrate his image as a president who favors France’s wealthy classes, the business establishment and white-collar voters as he set about overhauling the economy to bolster competitiveness.In 2019 he was forced to set aside plans to raise the retirement age to 65 after raucous nationwide strikes shut down much of France. He had sought to streamline France’s complex system of public and private pension schemes into one state-managed plan to close a shortfall of 18 billion euros, or about $19 billion.Following his confrontation in northern France last week, Mr. Macron insisted that he would continue to push back the retirement age incrementally — by four months per year starting next year — but that he was open to discussing an easing of the plan in its later stages.“It’s not dogma,” he said of the policy. “I have to listen to what people are saying to me.” Mr. Macron has struggled to achieve his goal of raising the retirement age to 65.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesMs. Le Pen accused Mr. Macron of engaging in a policy of “social wreckage” and of blowing with the wind to capture votes, although she has also shifted gears after the protectionist economic platform she advanced five years ago spooked businesses. She dropped plans to withdraw from the European Union and the eurozone.Today, Ms. Le Pen favors maintaining the current retirement age of 62, abandoning a previous push to reduce it to 60 — although certain workers engaged in intensive manual labor like construction could retire at the lower age.As Ms. Le Pen seeks to rebrand her far-right National Rally party as a kinder, gentler party than the one she steered in 2017, albeit with a clear anti-immigrant message, she has focused on economic issues close to blue-collar voters’ hearts.She got out front on one of the biggest issues of the campaign: a surge in the cost of living.While Mr. Macron was trying to broker a cease-fire in Ukraine, Ms. Le Pen was visiting towns and rural areas across France, promising increased subsidies for vulnerable households.She has pledged a 10 percent hike in France’s monthly minimum wage of 1,603 euros. She is also vowing to slash sales taxes to 5.5 percent from 20 percent on fuel, oil, gas and electricity, and to cut them altogether on 100 “essential” goods. Workers under 30 would be exempt from income tax, and young couples would get interest-free housing loans.Her France-first policy extends even further: To make up for increased spending on social programs, she has said she would slash billions in social spending on “foreigners.”Marine Le Pen speaking to supporters on April 10 after the first round of the French election. She has tried to recast her far-right party in a kinder, gentler form.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesShe has also vowed to create jobs and re-industrialize the country by prioritizing French companies for government contracts over foreign investors and dangling a host of expensive tax incentives to encourage French companies that have branched out overseas to return to France.While she has abandoned talk of a so-called Frexit — a French exit from the European Union — some of her proposals to protect the economy would amount to essentially that, including a pledge to ignore some European Union laws, including on internal free trade. She has said she would withhold some French payments to the bloc.Mr. Macron has branded such promises “pure fantasy” and is proposing to retain many of his pro-business policies, with modifications.Having vowed to lure jobs and investment, under his watch foreign companies have poured billions of euros into industrial projects and research and development, creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, many in tech start-ups, in a country that has not easily embraced change.At the same time, he has faced a challenge in discarding the image of an aloof president whose policies tended to benefit the most affluent. His abolition of a wealth tax and the introduction of a 30 percent flat tax on capital gains has mainly lifted incomes for the richest 0.1 percent and increased the distribution of dividends, according to the government’s own analysis.After a growing wealth divide helped set off the Yellow Vest movement in 2019, bringing struggling working-class people into the streets, Mr. Macron increased the minimum wage and made it easier for companies to give workers “purchasing power bonuses” of up to 3,000 euros annually without being taxed, a policy he has pledged to beef up.The candidates have tried to address concerns about rising fuel prices in blue-collar areas like Stiring-Wendel, a former coal mining town in France’s northeast.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesAs inflation has surged recently, Mr. Macron has also authorized billions of euros in subsidies for energy bills and at the gas pump and has promised to peg pension payments to inflation starting this summer. He has vowed new tax cuts for both households and businesses.His economic platform also aims for “full employment,” in part by pressing ahead with a series of pro-business reforms that has continued to lure the support of France’s biggest employers’ organization, Medef.“Emmanuel Macron’s program is the most favorable to ensure the growth of the economy and employment,” the group said last week, adding that Ms. Le Pen’s platform “would lead the country to stall compared to its neighbors and to put it on the sidelines of the European Union.”For all the differences, the pledges by Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen have one thing in common: more public spending, and less savings. According to estimates by the Institut Montaigne, a French economic think tank, Mr. Macron’s economic plan would worsen the public deficit by 44 billion euros, while Ms. Le Pen’s would widen it by 102 billion euros.“These shifts are significant enough to think that some of their proposals cannot actually be applied — except if they put in place budget austerity measures that they are not talking about,” Victor Poirier, director of publications at the Institut Montaigne, said. More

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      ‘La French Tech’ Arrives Under Macron, but Proves No Panacea

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      The president has brought innovation, jobs and growth. Still, resentments fester on the eve of the presidential election.PARIS — In full Steve Jobs mode, President Emmanuel Macron of France donned a black turtleneck in January and took to Twitter to celebrate the creation in France of 25 “unicorn” start-ups — companies with a market value of over 1 billion euros, or almost $1.1 billion.He declared that France’s start-up economy was “changing the lives of French people” and “strengthening our sovereignty.” It was also helping to create jobs: Unemployment has fallen to 7.4 percent, the lowest level in a decade.The start-up boom was a milestone for a young president elected five years ago as a restless disrupter, promising to pry open the economy and make it competitive in the 21st century.To some extent, Mr. Macron has succeeded, luring billions of euros in foreign investments and creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, many in tech start-ups, in a country whose resistance to change is stubborn. But disruption is just that, and the president has at the same time left many French feeling unsettled and unhappy, left behind or ignored.As Mr. Macron seeks re-election starting on Sunday, it is two countries that will vote — a mainly urban France that sees the need for change to meet the era’s sweeping technological and economic challenges, and a France of the “periphery,” wary of innovation, struggling to get by, alarmed by immigration and resentful of a leader seen as embodying the arrogance of the privileged.Which France shows up at voting booths in greater numbers will determine the outcome.Campaign posters on display this month in the northeastern French town of Stiring-Wendel.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesIn many Western societies, the simultaneous spread of technology and inequality has posed acute problems, stirring social tensions, and France has proved no exception. If the disenchanted France prevails, Marine Le Pen, the perennial candidate of the nationalist right, will most likely prevail, too.Worried that he may have lost the left by favoring start-up entrepreneurship and market reforms, Mr. Macron has in the past week been multiplying appeals to the left, resorting to phrases like “our lives are worth more than their profits” to suggest his perceived rightward lurch was not the whole story.He told France Inter radio that “fraternity” was the most important word in the French national motto, and said during a visit to Brittany that “solidarity” and “equality of opportunity” would be the central themes of an eventual second term.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.On the Scene: A Times reporter attended a rally held by Marine Le Pen, the far-right French presidential candidate. Here is what he saw.Challenges to Re-election: A troubled factory in President Emmanuel Macron’s hometown shows his struggle in winning the confidence of French workers.A Late Surge: After recently rising in voter surveys, Jean-Luc Mélenchon could become the first left-wing candidate since 2012 to reach the second round of the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.The pledges looked like signs of growing anxiety about the election’s outcome. After several months in which Mr. Macron’s re-election had appeared virtually assured, the gap between him and Ms. Le Pen has closed. The leading two candidates in Sunday’s vote will go through to a runoff on April 24.The election will be largely decided by perceptions of the economy. In Mr. Macron’s favor, the country has bounced back faster than expected from coronavirus lockdowns, with economic growth reaching 7 percent after a devastating pandemic-induced recession.Marine Le Pen speaking this month in Stiring-Wendel.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThe most significant cultural transformation has come in the area of tech, where Mr. Macron’s determination to create a start-up culture centered around new technology has brought changes the government considers essential to the future of France.Cédric O, the secretary of state for the digital sector, wearing jeans and a white dress shirt, no tie, admits to being obsessed. Day after long day, he plots the future of “la French tech” from his spacious office at the Finance Ministry.Five years ago, that may have seemed quixotic, but something has stirred. “It’s vital to be obsessed because the risk France and Europe are facing is to be kicked out of history,” Mr. O, 39, said, borrowing a line often used by Mr. Macron. “We have to get back into the international technological race.”Toward that end, Mr. Macron opened Station F, a mammoth incubator project in Paris representing France’s start-up ambitions, and earmarked nearly €10 billion in tax credits and other inducements to lure research activity and artificial intelligence business. A new bank was created to help finance start-ups.The president wined and dined multinational chief executives, creating an annual gathering at Versailles called “Choose France.”Since 2019, France has become the leading destination for foreign investment in Europe, and more than 70 investment projects worth €12 billion have been pledged by foreign multinationals at the Versailles gatherings, said Franck Riester, France’s foreign trade minister.In the past four years, IBM, SAP of Germany and DeepMind, the London-based machine learning company owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet, have increased investment in France and created thousands of jobs.Station F, a mammoth project in Paris that represents France’s start-up ambitions.Roberto Frankenberg for The New York TimesFacebook and Google have also bolstered their French presence and their artificial intelligence teams in Paris. Salesforce, the American cloud computing company, is moving ahead with over €2 billion in pledged investments.“Macron brought a culture shift where France was suddenly open to the world of funders,” said Thomas Clozel, a doctor by training and the founder in 2016 of Owkin, a start-up that uses Artificial Intelligence to personalize and improve medical treatment. “He made everything easy for start-up entrepreneurs and so changed the view of France as an anticapitalist society.”François Hollande, Mr. Macron’s Socialist Party predecessor, had famously declared in 2012: “My enemy is the world of finance.” As a result, Mr. Clozel said, securing funds as a French start-up was so problematic that he chose to incorporate in the United States.No longer.“Today, I am thinking of reincorporating in France,” he said. “The ease of dealing with the government, the consortium of start-ups helping one another, and the new French tech pride are compelling.”Among the start-ups that have had a significant effect on French life are Doctolib, a website that allows patients to arrange for medical appointments and tests online, and Backmarket, an online market for reconditioned tech gadgets that just became France’s most valuable start-up, at $5.7 billion.They began life before Mr. Macron took office, but have grown exponentially in the past five years.“I have made 56 investments in the last two years, and 53 of them are in France,” said Jonathan Benhamou, a French entrepreneur who founded PeopleDoc, a company that simplifies access to information for human resources departments.Now funding new ventures and focusing on a new start-up called Resilience in the field of personalized cancer care, Mr. Benhamou credits Mr. Macron with “giving investors confidence in stability and creating a virtuous cycle.”Talented engineers no longer go elsewhere because there is an “ecosystem” for them in France, Mr. O said.Yellow Vest protesters blocking a road in Caen, in France’s Normandy region, in November 2018.Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Macron has insisted that opening the economy is consistent with maintaining protections for French workers and that the arrival of la French tech does not mean the embrace of the no-holds-barred capitalism behind the churn of American creativity.Despite the president’s overhauls, France remains one of the most expensive countries for payroll taxes, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with hourly labor costs of nearly €38, close to levels seen in Sweden, Norway and other northern European countries.“We know that we have to go further,” Mr. Riester, the foreign trade minister, said in a recent interview. “We still have some brakes that could be taken off the economy, and we have to cut some red tape in the future.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. 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      For Macron, France’s Troubled Industries Hit Home

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      President Emmanuel Macron vowed an economic revival, but as he seeks re-election, a Potemkin factory in the town where he was raised shows just how hard that can be.AMIENS, France — During the last presidential campaign, the troubled Whirlpool factory in the northern city of Amiens became the setting for frantic, dueling appeals for support by Emmanuel Macron and his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen.Mr. Macron promised to save the plant — which happens to be in his hometown — and once he was elected, his government poured millions in subsidies toward the factory’s reinvention, as a showpiece of his commitment to reviving French industry.As Mr. Macron seeks re-election, he and Ms. Le Pen are preparing to square off once again as the front-runners before the first round of voting in presidential elections on Sunday. But the fate of the plant has proved much the opposite of what Mr. Macron had hoped for.Today, the plant is an example of the difficulty of rehabilitating ailing French industries and of the president’s challenge in winning the confidence of French workers, who have been gravitating for years to the far right.The mammoth plant in Amiens, where weeds have pushed through asphalt and the cafeteria’s menu is frozen on sausage fricassee, is deserted and lifeless, except for three last Whirlpool workers who spend their days huddling around the coffee machines in a few small rooms.The plant’s new operator was convicted in February of misuse of funds, after a year of taking money from the government and Whirlpool and doing precious little with it. Workers say they spent idle days as next to nothing rolled off the assembly line. Instead, they kept busy killing time, taking extended cigarette breaks or lying inside their cars fidgeting on their smartphones.Frédéric Chantrelle, left, one of the last three workers still employed at the plant in Amiens, and Christophe Beaugrand, a former employee.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times“Two or three times, when someone important visited, we had to pretend to work or hide,” recalled Mariano Munoz, 49, who was in charge of janitorial services. “The welders welded all sorts of things and hammered away. One or two tinkered with a car. Me, I’d take the street cleaner and I’d sweep the entire parking lot.”Mr. Macron was elected as a change agent five years ago, with plans to disrupt the heavily unionized industrial sector that had stagnated as owners feared the rising cost of French workers who were guaranteed years of ample benefits and were notoriously difficult to fire. For years, unemployment hovered chronically at 8 percent or more as the industrial sector atrophied.Initially, Mr. Macron attempted to overhaul France’s economy by pushing through business-friendly changes, like cutting taxes, especially for the wealthy. In his first years as president, he took on some of France’s toughest unions, provoking the biggest strikes the country had seen in years as he revamped France’s voluminous labor code, making it easier to hire and fire workers.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.Suddenly Wide Open: An election that had seemed almost assured to return President Emmanuel Macron to power now appears to be anything but certain.On Stage: As the vote approaches, theaters and comedy venues are tackling the campaign with one message: Don’t trust politicians.Behind the Scene: In France, where political finance laws are strict, control over the media has provided an avenue for billionaires to influence the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.Private Consultants: A report showing that firms like McKinsey earned large sums of money to do work for his government has put President Emmannuel Macron on the defensive.But even as the overall economy has bounced back strongly from the pandemic, Mr. Macron’s efforts to reindustrialize France have proved decidedly mixed, economists say, as evidenced by the nation’s trade deficit of 84.7 billion euros, about $93 billion, last year — a record — as well as the plant in Amiens, which had made tumble dryers for Whirlpool and did not survive despite nearly €10 million in subsidies.Amiens North, an area inhabited by many descendants of North Africans recruited to work in factories in the 1960s and ’70s.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesFor Mr. Macron, the plant’s long, agonizing death has complicated every trip back to his hometown, about 80 miles north of Paris. It reinforced the impression of Mr. Macron, a former investment banker, as the president of the rich, someone cut off from ordinary French people — like the nearly 300 workers who lost their jobs when the plant finally did close in 2018.Many of the laid off workers went on to join the Yellow Vest movement, whose ranks were filled with working-class French struggling under high taxes and a lack of earning power, ushering in the biggest political crisis of Mr. Macron’s presidency.Burned by the Yellow Vest protests, Mr. Macron’s government spent massively to offset the economic shock of the pandemic, and unemployment is now at its lowest in a decade. Still, it is service-sector jobs that have continued to increase, while industrial employment declines.Thomas Grjebine, an economist at CEPII, a research center in Paris, said that the fate of the Amiens plant was “symptomatic” of the difficulties of reviving the industrial sector. “In fact, the government is somewhat powerless before the closings of plants,” Mr. Grjebine said. “But many promises are made during campaigns.”During Mr. Macron’s campaign for the presidency in 2017, 11 days before the final vote, Mr. Macron met with union leaders in town, while Ms. Le Pen paid a surprise visit to the plant’s parking lot and was greeted warmly by striking employees — forcing a reluctant Mr. Macron to follow.Patrice Sinoquet, another of the last remaining workers at the plant, showed a photograph of Mr. Macron visiting the factory in 2019.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesHeckled and jostled by the hostile crowd, Mr. Macron tried to catch up with Ms. Le Pen, whose party, then called the National Front, had won the department that includes Amiens in the first round of voting that year.“You think it doesn’t hurt me in the gut that people vote for the National Front on my soil?” Mr. Macron said to the crowd. Later, he promised a “real Marshall Plan for the reindustrialization of our economically lost territories.”Half a year after his election victory, that promise seemed in sight. A prominent local businessman, Nicolas Decayeux, was selected to take over the plant with a project to manufacture refrigerated lockers and small vehicles. He took on 162 of the 282 laid-off Whirlpool workers and received €2.6 million in subsidies from the government and €7.4 million from Whirlpool.During a celebratory visit to the plant, Mr. Macron was accompanied by Mr. Decayeux. In a follow-up letter to Mr. Decayeux, the president wrote that the businessman’s “beautiful entrepreneurial project” would “contribute to our industrial recovery.”“I really had stars in my eyes because here is a young president who wants to reform France,” recalled Mr. Decayeux, who named his company WN.It was a rare piece of good news for Amiens, a picturesque town of more than 130,000 that straddles the Somme River.Like much of northern France, it had been hit by deindustrialization for two generations as successive national governments considered a shift toward a consumer-driven economy a sign of modernization, witnessed in the Amazon warehouses that have opened in Amiens and elsewhere.An Amazon facility near Amiens. The shift toward a consumer-driven economy was seen by successive national governments as a sign of modernization.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times“This drop in social standing, the sentiment of being abandoned and of not mattering, eased the way for extremism,” said Brigitte Fouré, the center-right mayor of Amiens.In an interview with a French magazine last year, Mr. Macron said that growing up in Amiens, he had witnessed the “full force of deindustrialization” in his region. Still, he acknowledged that he himself had enjoyed a sheltered upbringing, living in a “rather happy bubble, and even a bubble in a bubble.”The son of two medical doctors, Mr. Macron grew up in Amiens’s richest neighborhood, Henriville, and attended the city’s most prestigious school, a private Jesuit establishment called La Providence. “He’s from Henriville, and when you say, ‘Henriville,’ it’s Versailles,” said M’hammed El Hiba, the longtime head of Alco, a community center in Amiens North, an area inhabited by the descendants of North Africans recruited to work in factories in the 1960s and 1970s.Mr. Macron grew up in Amiens’s richest neighborhood, Henriville, and attended the city’s most prestigious school, a private Jesuit establishment called La Providence. Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesAt the former Whirlpool plant, the optimism faded quickly. Former workers said that Mr. Decayeux’s plans to build lockers and small vehicles never took off.“Nothing was happening,” said Christophe Beaugrand, 44, a welder who was hired by Mr. Decayeux after being laid off by Whirlpool. “People were in the cafeteria with their phones and chargers. When the prefect visited, we had to make noise or hide.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. More