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      Rust Belt Union Blues: how Trump wooed workers away from the Democrats

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      Consider the following social science experiment: go into a unionized steel mill parking lot in western Pennsylvania, look at the bumper stickers and track the political messages. Given the longstanding bond between unions and the Democratic party, you might predict widespread support for Democratic candidates. Yet when the then Harvard undergraduate Lainey Newman conducted such unconventional field research during the Covid pandemic, encouraged by her faculty mentor Theda Skocpol, results indicated otherwise. There was a QAnon sticker here, a Back the Blue flag there. But one name proliferated: Donald Trump.It all supported a surprising claim: industrial union members in the shrunken manufacturing hubs of the US are abandoning their historic loyalty to the Democrats for the Republican party.“The most interesting point, how telling it is, is that those stickers were out in the open,” Newman says. “Everyone in the community knew. It was not something people hide.“It would not have been something old-timers would have been OK with, frankly. They stood up against … voting for Republicans, that type of thing.”Newman documented this political shift and the complex reasons for it in her senior thesis, with Skocpol as her advisor. Now the recent graduate and the veteran professor have teamed up to turn the project into a book: Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party.The book comes out as organized labor is returning to the headlines, whether through the United Auto Workers strike at the big three US carmakers or through the battle to buy a former industrial powerhouse, US Steel. In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump is again wooing union voters. On the 3 September edition of ABC’s This Week, the Manhattan Institute president, Reihan Salam, noted that Trump “was trying to appeal to UAW members to talk about, for example, this effort to transition away from combustion engine vehicles”.Newman reflects: “It is relatively well-known [that] union members aren’t voting for Democrats like they used to. What we say is that for a very long time, Democrats did take unions for granted. They didn’t reinvest in the relationship with labor that would have been necessary to maintain some of the alliances and trust between rank-and-file labor and the Democrats.”Once, the bond was as strong as the steel worked by union hands across western Pennsylvania, especially in Pittsburgh, known to some as “The City That Built America”. Retirees repeatedly mentioned this in interviews with Newman and Skocpol. An 81-year-old explained longtime hostility to the Republican party in unionized steel mills and coal mines: “They figure that there was not a Republican in the world who took care of a working guy.” A union newsletter, one of many the authors examined, urged readers to “Vote Straight ‘D’ This November”. Even in the 1980 presidential election, which Ronald Reagan won decisively, union-heavy counties in Pennsylvania were a good predictor of votes for the incumbent Democrat, Jimmy Carter.The subsequent sea change is summed up in one of Newman and Skocpol’s chapter titles, From Union Blue to Trump Red. In 2016, the connection between Pennsylvania union voters and Democratic support all but evaporated as Trump flipped the normally Democratic state en route to victory. His showing that year set a new bar for support for a GOP presidential candidate among rank-and-file union members, bettering Reagan’s standard, with such members often defying leadership to back Trump.“It’s a myth that it all happened suddenly with Reagan,” says Skocpol. “Not really – it took longer.”‘In Union There Is Strength’To understand these changes, Newman and Skocpol examined larger transformations at work across the Rust Belt, especially in western Pennsylvania. It helped that they have Rust Belt backgrounds: Newman grew up in Pittsburgh, where she returned to research the book, while Skocpol was raised in the former industrial city of Wyandotte, Michigan, located south of Detroit.Once, as they now relate, unions wove themselves into community life. Union halls hosted events from weddings to retirement parties. Members showcased their pride through union memorabilia, some of which is displayed in the book, including samples from Skocpol’s 3,000-item collection. Among her favorites: a glass worker’s badge featuring images of drinking vessels and the motto “In Union There Is Strength”.That strength eventually dissipated, including with the implosion of the steel industry in western Pennsylvania in the 1970s and 80s. (According to one interviewee, the resulting population shift explains why there are so many Pittsburgh Steelers fans across the US.) In formerly thriving communities, cinemas and shoe stores closed down, as did union halls. The cover of Skocpol and Newman’s book depicts a line of shuttered storefronts in Braddock, Pennsylvania, the steel town whose former mayor, the Democrat John Fetterman, is now a US senator.Not all union members left western Pennsylvania. As the book explains, those continuing in employment did so in changed conditions. Steelworkers battled each other for dwindling jobs, capital held ever more power and Pittsburgh itself changed. The Steel City sought to reinvent itself through healthcare and higher education, steelworkers wondering where they stood.Blue-collar workers found a more receptive climate among conservative social organizations that filled the vacuum left by retreating unions: gun clubs that benefited from a strong hunting tradition and megachurches that replaced closed local churches. The region even became a center of activity for the Tea Party movement, in opposition to Barack Obama, a phenomenon Skocpol has researched on the national level.In 2016, although Trump and Hillary Clinton made a nearly equal number of visits to western Pennsylvania, they differed in where they went and what they said. Clinton headed to Pittsburgh. Trump toured struggling factory towns, to the south and west. In one, Monessen, he pledged to make American steel great again – a campaign position, the authors note, unuttered for decades and in stark contrast with Clinton’s anti-coal stance. As president, Trump arguably followed through, with a 2018 tariff on aluminum and steel imports. The book cites experts who opposed the move for various reasons, from harm to the economy to worsened relations with China.The authors say their book is not meant to criticize unions or the Democratic party. Democrats, they say, are taking positive steps in response to union members’ rightward shift.“We didn’t have time to research at length all the new kinds of initiatives that have been taken in a state like Wisconsin, like Georgia,” says Skocpol. “They have learned some of the lessons, are trying to create year-round, socially-embedded presences.”In 2020, Joe Biden made multiple visits to western Pennsylvania and ended up narrowly winning Erie county, which had been trending red. As president, he has sought to have the federal government purchase more US-made products, while launching renewable energy initiatives through union labor. Skocpol says Trump’s more ambitious promises, including an across-the-board 10% tariff, propose an unrealistic bridge to a bygone era.“Will Trump promise to do all these things?” asks Skocpol. “Of course he will. Will he actually do them more effectively if he becomes president again? God help us all.”
      Rust Belt Union Blues is published in the US by Columbia University Press More

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      in US Politics

      Strikes aren’t bad for the US economy. They’re the best thing that could happen | Robert Reich

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      America is in the midst of the biggest surge in labor activity in a quarter-century.The United Auto Workers (UAW), the Writers Guild of America, the actors’ union known as Sag-Aftra, Starbucks workers, Amazon workers, the Teamsters and UPS, flight attendants. The list goes on.More than 4.1m workdays were lost to stoppages last month, according to the labor department. That’s the most since 2000. And this was before the UAW struck the big three.Some worry about the effect of all this labor activism on the US economy, and view organized labor as a “special interest” demanding more than it deserves.Rubbish. Labor activism is good for the economy in the long run. And organized labor isn’t a special interest. It’s the leading edge of the American workforce.What accounts for this extraordinary moment of labor activity?Not that workers enjoy striking. Even where unions have funds to help striking workers offset lost wages, they rarely make up even half of what’s forgone. Large corporations whose operations are hobbled by strikes often lay off other workers, as the big three and their suppliers are now threatening to do.The reason workers go on strike is their expectation that the longer-term gains will be worth the sacrifices.Today’s labor market continues to be tight, despite efforts by the Fed to slow the economy and make it harder for workers to get raises. So employers (like UPS) are more inclined to give ground to avoid a prolonged strike.But something far more basic is going on here. As I travel around the country, I hear from average working people an anger and bitterness I haven’t heard for decades. It centers on several things.The first is that wages have barely increased while corporate profits are in the stratosphere.Average weekly non-supervisory wages, a measure of blue-collar earnings, were higher in 1969 (adjusted for inflation) than they are now.The American dream of upward mobility has turned into a nightmare of falling behind. Whereas 90% of American adults born in the early 1940s were earning more than their parents by the time they reached their prime earning years, this has steadily declined. Only half of adults born in the mid-1980s are now earning more than their parents by their prime earning years.Nearly one out of every five American workers is in a part-time job. Two-thirds are living paycheck to paycheck.Meanwhile, executive compensation has gone through the roof. In 1965, CEOs of America’s largest corporations were paid, on average, 20 times the pay of average workers. Today, the ratio is over 398 to 1.Not only has CEO pay exploded. So has the pay of top executives just below them. The share of corporate income devoted to compensating the five highest-paid executives of large corporations ballooned from an average of 5% in 1993 to more than 15% today.Corporate apologists claim CEOs and other top executives are worth these staggering sums because their corporations have performed so well. They compare star CEOs to star baseball players or movie stars.But most CEOs have simply ridden the stock market wave. Even if a company’s CEO had done nothing but play online solitaire, the company’s stock price would have soared.Stock buybacks have also soared – a huge subsidy to investors that further tips the scales against working people. The richest 1% of Americans owns about half the value of all shares of stock. The richest 10%, over 90%.Why don’t corporations devote more of their income to research and development, or to higher wages and benefits for average workers? In a word, greed.Small wonder that unions are more popular than they’ve been in a generation. A Gallup poll published in August found that 67% of Americans approve of unions, the fifth straight year such support has exceeded the long-term polling average of 62%.Joe Biden has pitched himself as the most pro-union president in recent history. More surprisingly, Republican politicians are trying to curry favor with union workers as well. Both parties know that much of the working class is up for grabs in 2024.American workers still have little to no countervailing power relative to large American corporations. Unionized workers now comprise only 6% of private-sector workforce – down from over a third in the 1960s.Which is why the activism of the UAW, the Writers Guild, Sag-Aftra, the Teamsters, flight attendants, Amazon warehouse workers and Starbucks workers is so important.In a very real sense, these workers are representing all American workers. If they win, they’ll energize other workers, even those who are not unionized. They’ll mobilize some to form or join unions.They’ll push non-union employers to raise wages and benefits out of a fear of becoming unionized if they don’t. They’ll galvanize other workers to stage wildcat strikes for better pay and working conditions.For far too long, America’s top executives, Wall Street traders and biggest investors have siphoned off almost all the economic gains. This is unsustainable, economically and politically.It’s not economically sustainable because the only way businesses can sell the goods and services American workers produce is if workers have enough money to buy them. If most gains continue to go to the top, the economy will become ever more susceptible to downdrafts and crashes.Today’s mainstream media emphasize the feared negative effects of the current wave of strike on the US economy, forgetting that the wave of strikes in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s helped create the largest middle class the world had ever seen – the key to America’s postwar prosperity.Stagnant wages and widening inequality are politically unsustainable because they foster anger and bitterness that’s easily channeled by demagogic politicians (re: Donald Trump and his enablers in the Republican party) into bigotry, paranoia, xenophobia and authoritarianism.The current wave of strikes isn’t bad for America. It’s good for America.Labor is not a “special interest”. It is, in a real sense, all of us.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Bernie Sanders: workers should reap AI benefits in form of ‘lowering workweek’

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      If the US’s ongoing artificial intelligence and robotics boom translates into more work being done faster, then laborers should reap some of the gains of that in the form of more paid time off, the liberal US senator Bernie Sanders said Sunday.“I happen to believe that – as a nation – we should begin a serious discussion … about substantially lowering the workweek,” Sanders remarked on CNN’s State of the Union.Citing the parenting, housing, healthcare and financial stresses confronting most Americans while generally shortening their life expectancies, he added: “It seems to me that if new technology is going to make us a more productive society, the benefits should go to the workers.“And it would be an extraordinary thing to see people have more time to be able to spend with their kids, with their families, to be able to do more … cultural activities, get a better education. So the idea of … making sure artificial intelligence [and] robotics benefits us all – not just the people on top – is something, absolutely, we need to be discussing.”Sanders, an independent who caucuses with congressional Democrats, delivered those comments after State of the Union host Jake Tapper asked him about the four-day work week sought by the United Auto Workers. About 13,000 workers from that union went on strike Friday against the nation’s three biggest carmakers – General Motors, Ford and Chrysler-parent company Stellantis – after walking away from negotiations to renew a contract that expired at the end of the previous day.Tapper asked Sanders, who appeared Friday at a rally in support of the strike, whether the concept of a shortened work week may simply be a negotiating tactic that the UAW would abandon when some of its other demands were met. But Sanders defended the validity of the demand while also seizing the moment to reiterate criticisms of the gaudy salaries collected by the car manufacturers’ executives.Sanders – the chairperson of the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee – alluded to how the CEOs of GM, Ford and Stellantis had pocketed hundreds of times more than their workers’ median wage. Their pay jumped by 40% between 2013 and 2022 while their workers’ real hourly earnings fell by about a fifth since 2008, according to the Economics Policy Institute.According to the UAW, the disparity has shown how workers were never fully compensated for the sacrifices their bosses asked of them after the 2008-09 financial crisis, when they agreed to numerous cuts in the name of bailing out the auto industry. Demands from the union’s striking members include a 40% wage increase, better retirement benefits and job security protections – in addition to the 32-hour work week.Seventy-five percent of Americans support the striking auto workers, according to a recent poll from Gallup.Nonetheless, the sheer scale of the strike could unsettle the US economy as a whole and may eventually mean higher car prices for already distressed commuters.Meanwhile, the UAW’s president, Shawn Fain, told MSNBC and CBS on Sunday that progress had been mostly slow in the talks between his union and the carmakers.Speaking to Tapper before Sanders’s appearance, former Republican US vice-president Mike Pence sought to blame the Joe Biden White House for auto workers’ dissatisfaction.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“All those hardworking auto workers are living in the same reality every other Americans live, and that is wages are not keeping up with inflation,” Pence said.But Sanders contended that the car industry’s top executives are solely to blame for the strike.“American people are sick and tired, in my view, … of corporate greed, in which the very richest people are becoming richer,” Sanders said. “What you’re seeing in the automobile industry, in my view, is what we’re seeing all over this economy – greed on the top, suffering on the part of the working class, and people are tired of it.“You people on top – you’ve never had it so good. … So UAW is standing up against corporate greed. And I applaud them for what they’re doing.” More

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      ‘We build those cars’: US workers on Ford picket line demand a fair share

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      Under blue skies in Wayne, Michigan, a half-hour outside Detroit, the mood was festive but defiant as hundreds of autoworkers settled in for the first weekend of picketing at the entrances to Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant.Ford’s workers were among the first to go out in a series of targeted strikes that marked the beginning of the largest industrial action taken by US car workers in over a decade.A chorus of horns blared in support from Michigan Avenue, a busy highway running through the nation’s automotive heartland. Strikers turned away semi-truck after semi-truck trying to deliver parts to the plant, which produces the Ranger and Bronco. “Hell no, you’re not coming in here, keep it moving,” a worker yelled.The United Auto Workers (UAW) president, Shawn Fain, called the strike after failing to reach new union contracts with Ford, General Motors and Stellantis before a midnight Thursday deadline.The strikers’ message: they’re no longer accepting the automakers’ “corporate greed”. They point to the companies’ record profits in recent years and huge stock buyback programs that are enacted as workers struggle to make ends meet.Ford’s CEO, Jim Farley, briefly stopped by to meet with picketers. Several workers near retirement weren’t particularly impressed by the gesture. He made $29m a year, they noted, while hourly workers were “fighting to get money to survive after we leave here”, said plant worker Stu Jackson. “How many years do we even have left to live after we retire? Ten years?” asked Jackson, who highlighted the toll factory work exacts on workers’ bodies and health.“Did you see Farley in his tailored European suit? Wasn’t he sharp?” Jackson asked. “He looks like the $29m man. Those nice shoes.“And look at us,” Jackson added with indignation, motioning to the small group dressed in jeans, T-shirts and sweatpants. “This isn’t fair.”As Fain has pointed out repeatedly, CEO pay has soared as the car companies have recovered from the 2008/2009 financial crisis. Pay for the big three companies’ bosses jumped by 40% between 2013 and 2022. The GM boss, Mary Barra, took home $29m in 2022. Meanwhile, auto manufacturing workers have seen their average real hourly earnings fall 19.3% since 2008, according to the Economics Policy Institute.Domonique Hicks, a young mother of three who lives in Detroit, said the $16.67-an-hour wage she received was not feeding her children.“We’re here to take back what Ford took from us,” Hicks said. “They didn’t want to bargain with us so we’re making a statement – if you can make millions and billions, then we deserve something. We build those cars.” The strike will go on for as long as Ford “wants to keep their checkbook in their pocket”, she added.Among other issues, the union is calling for a 40%-plus pay increase, an end to two-tier wage systems in which new hires are paid significantly less for doing the same work and the restoration of benefits cut to help save the car companies after the 2008/2009 recession drove them to bankruptcy.Auto executives expressed frustration as the strike entered its first weekend. A Ford spokesman called the UAW’s terms “unsustainable”. “I’m extremely frustrated and disappointed. We don’t need to be in a strike right now,” Barra told CNBC on Friday.The White House is watching developments closely. On Friday Joe Biden said his team was engaged in trying to find a resolution and called on the car companies to “go further” in their negotiations with striking workers.“The companies have made some significant offers. But I believe that should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts,” he said. “Record corporate profits, which they have, should be shared by record contracts for the UAW,” Biden reiterated.Hicks said she had a message for those who oppose the strike, or worry about how it will affect the economy. “People are hurting. You’re talking about shutting down the economy? [The auto companies] are shutting down the economy because they aren’t putting money back into it, so we’re here to get it.“How am I supposed to feed my kids?” Hicks asked. “We’re just trying to live and support our family.”Even with a wage of about $24 an hour after starting at $16 nearly four years ago, plant worker Amanda Robinson says she can barely afford the payments on her car and there’s not much left after bills at the end of the month to raise her three-year-old son.Working in the plant is not an “easy walk in the park, sit at a desk” job, she said. It was grueling and took a physical toll, Robinson added, and they deserved better wages.“We’re showing them that we’re not playing,” she said. “We’re willing to do whatever it takes. Everybody is standing behind us.” More

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      UAW strike: Bernie Sanders commends ‘fight against corporate greed’ – video

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      The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders said US motor workers were ‘fighting against corporate greed’ as he spoke in support of the biggest automotive industry strike in decades. Speaking to members of the United Auto Workers union at a rally in Detroit, Michigan, Sanders said it was reasonable for employees at the largest US auto companies – Ford, Stellantis and General Motors – to get a ‘fair share of the record-breaking profits’. A disagreement over a new contract led to about 130,000 workers taking to the picket lines shortly after midnight on Thursday More

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      ‘A fight against corporate greed’: Bernie Sanders rallies with UAW in Detroit

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      US car workers striking against the nation’s three biggest automakers “are waging … a fight against the outrageous level of corporate greed” seen across the country, Bernie Sanders said on Friday.The liberal US senator’s remarks came on Friday afternoon during a rally with the United Auto Workers in Detroit, Michigan, kicking off the first day of the union’s “Stand Up” strikes against General Motors, Stellantis and Ford.During his speech at the rally, Sanders told the crowd: “The fight that you are waging here is not only about decent wages, decent benefits and decent working conditions in the automobile industry. No. The fight you are waging is a fight against the outrageous level of corporate greed and arrogance that we are seeing on the part of CEOs who think they have a right to have it all and could [not] care less about the needs of their workers.”He continued: “The fight you are waging is to rebuild the struggling middle class of our country that was once the envy of the world.”Sanders also asserted that the CEOs and stockholders of the US’s biggest carmakers “make out like bandits”.“We refuse to live in an oligarchy,” Sanders said. “We refuse to accept a society in which so few have so much and so many have so little.”Among those who watched the Vermont senator’s speech was Chris Sanders, a worker at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, for 10 years. Sanders, 54, told the Guardian that significant media attention and focus on the economic effects of the strike on businesses and consumers misses the point.“The question that should be asked is what has 20 years of not paying our fair share cost the economy?” he said. “If we learned [anything] from the Covid-19 pandemic, we learned that putting money in the hands of real people is what keeps the economy going, because what creates jobs are not billionaires.“What creates jobs is having money in the hands of real people spending it or saving it, because they are spending it on products that create demand.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionChris Sanders noted the Ford plant had been holding job fairs and had trouble hiring because the starting wages of about $16 an hour no longer compete with other jobs. “No one ever has a problem with the executives getting paid $21m to $27m, and hourly labor and benefits is less than 5% of the total cost of a vehicle,” he said. “They just always want to put it to the greedy autoworker and I’m so damn tired of it.”Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, it secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, and lieutenant governor, Garlin Gilchrist II, gave introductory speeches at the rally before the UAW president, Shawn Fain, brought on Sanders, who is an independent but caucuses with Democrats.“It’s time to pick a side,” Fain said while introducing Sanders. “Either you’re with the billionaire class or you’re with the working class.” More

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      UAW strike: Joe Biden calls for resolution but understands workers’ frustrations – video

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      The US president said on Friday that no one wanted the United Auto Workers’ union to strike in its labour dispute with the big three US carmakers – but workers should get a share of the profits those companies are making.

      Biden told reporters at the White House that he understood the workers’ frustration, adding: ‘Record corporate profits … should be shared by record contracts for the UAW’ More

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      in Elections

      ‘We’re not asking to be millionaires’: workers strike at US car giants – video

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      Car workers have launched a series of strikes after their union failed to reach agreement on a new contract with the three largest US vehicle manufacturers, kicking off the country’s most ambitious industrial action in decades.
      The deadline for talks between the United Auto Workers union (UAW) and the car manufacturers Ford, General Motors and Stellantis expired at midnight on Thursday, with the sides still far from agreement on UAW’s contract priorities More