In Michigan, Biden and Trump vie to be labor’s best friend

President Joe Biden’s trip to suburban Detroit on Tuesday was about so much more than a show of support for striking autoworkers. 

It was history in action – the first time a sitting American president joined a picket line. It was an effort by a struggling Democratic president with a personal narrative centered on working-class values to woo a key voting bloc. And it was effectively the launch of the 2024 general election campaign. 

Former President Donald Trump, President Biden’s likely opponent in 2024, is skipping the Republican primary debate Wednesday night and delivering a prime-time speech in Detroit to current and former union members. The Trump campaign called Mr. Biden’s picket-line appearance “nothing more than a cheap photo op.” The White House responded by noting that Mr. Biden was personally invited by the president of the autoworkers’ union.

“Stick with it. You deserve a significant raise and other benefits,” Mr. Biden told the picketers.

For Mr. Biden, Tuesday's trip reflects a larger Democratic effort to shore up support among blue-collar voters, who have been shifting toward the Republican Party in recent years over cultural and economic issues and a distrust of elites. Mr. Trump’s populist pitch was key to winning the crucial battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in 2016 – all states that Mr. Biden then took back in 2020. Now, both he and Mr. Trump – deadlocked in 2024 polls – are pouncing early.

“Union support of Democrats has not been monolithic, and this is the latest version of that contest,” says Michael Traugott, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. “There’s a lot of economic anxiety that comes partially from growing income inequality in the American population.”

Workers striking against the big three U.S. automakers – General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis – are demanding a 40% wage hike and full-time pay for a 32-hour work week. Mr. Biden has offered statements of support for the United Auto Workers union, but avoided commenting on specific demands. The UAW has yet to make an endorsement in the 2024 presidential race, but Mr. Biden has been endorsed by the AFL-CIO and 17 other unions. 

The strike – which expanded last week to additional GM and Stellantis plants, but not Ford, amid signs of progress in talks with that company – threatens to harm the American economy at a delicate moment. And therefore Mr. Biden’s appearance on the picket line Tuesday is risky: If the strikes drags on, and becomes unpopular, he owns it. Mr. Biden has pushed hard for electric cars, including financial incentives contained in the Inflation Reduction Act, but autoworkers are concerned about job security. Electric cars require fewer workers to build, and there’s no guarantee they will be produced in union shops. 

Mr. Trump has criticized the UAW leadership, saying that their union is heading for obsolescence, as most electric cars will soon be built in China. “The autoworkers are being sold down the river by their leadership,” he said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Unlike Mr. Biden, the former president will not be joining a picket line Wednesday, instead speaking to about 500 workers at a non-unionized auto-parts manufacturer in Macomb County, near Detroit. Mr. Trump’s speech was announced before Mr. Biden’s plan to come to Detroit. 

“Joe Biden has been forced to come join the picket line ... because of the fact that Trump basically called his card,” says Rocky Raczkowski, chair of the Oakland County GOP in suburban Detroit.

Mr. Raczkowski, like Mr. Trump, argues that union leaders have failed workers by aligning with the Democrats and their climate agenda, including the transition to electric cars, while foreign companies increase their market share. “The corporate bosses of these companies are in favor of Democratic leaders and Democratic leadership and not fighting back,” he says.

As the 2024 campaign ramps up, Mr. Trump’s policies vis a vis union workers are also likely to garner more scrutiny. 

“Trump talks a lot about his solidarity and plays into the anger of particular groups,” says Peter Berg, a professor of employment relations at Michigan State University.  “But when you look at what he actually does in his policies, they’re pretty mainstream conservative.”

Mr. Trump’s appointees to the National Labor Relations Board weren’t particularly union-friendly, Professor Berg notes. The Trump NRLB took steps to limit employees’ rights to organize in certain workplaces and made it easier for workplaces to get rid of existing unions and to classify workers as independent contractors.

“Trump probably ran the most vehemently anti-union administration we’ve seen in decades,” says Democratic strategist Steve Rosenthal, a former political director of the AFL-CIO. He also characterizes Trump Supreme Court appointees as hostile to labor.

On the other hand, some of Mr. Trump’s actions on trade – such as imposing stiff tariffs on certain imports, and renegotiating trade agreements – drew praise from labor leaders. 

Mr. Biden’s record on labor includes strong support for unions and the right to collective bargaining, and his appointees to the NLRB have worked to reverse some of the Trump administration’s policies. In his first two years in office, he got numerous job-generating bills through Congress, including massive investments in climate, infrastructure, and semiconductor manufacturing. Mr. Biden also proudly advertises a law restoring the pensions of more than a million people that had been underfunded.

This week’s showdown in Detroit harks back to the 2016 election, when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton gave short shrift to union-aligned households and lost to Mr. Trump.  

“She didn’t make the traditional stops, didn’t visit union halls or plants in Michigan or steel mills in Pennsylvania,” says Mr. Rosenthal. “She essentially was saying to those union workers, this election is not about you, and it showed.”

In that election, Mrs. Clinton won union households in Michigan 53% to 40% according to exit polls – a smaller margin than Democratic nominees typically have received. In 2020, Mr. Biden won the union vote in Michigan 62%-37%. The other two “blue wall” states, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, showed similar turnarounds for the Democratic ticket among union members in 2020. 

Mr. Biden has to keep reassuring blue-collar voters on economic matters, even as some disagree with him on cultural matters, such as gun rights, Democratic strategists say. 

“Blue-collar folks have felt like they’ve been screwed for 40 years, that no one was paying attention to them, that the establishments of both parties were not looking out for them and there was a lot of bitterness about that,” says Mike Lux, a Democratic consultant who has worked with unions. 

“Trump was the ultimate anti-establishment guy – anti-Republican Party establishment and anti-Democratic Party establishment – and some people saw in him someone who would shake things up,” Mr. Lux adds.

One key voting bloc in the 2024 race will be nonwhite voters who have not finished college – a group that includes many UAW workers. 

In his 2012 reelection, President Barack Obama won nonwhite working-class voters by a 67-point margin. Last week, a New York Times/Siena poll showed Mr. Biden’s lead over Mr. Trump within that cohort at a much narrower 49%-33%. Third-party candidates and voters choosing to stay home are other things that worry Democrats, whose likely nominee does not generate intense enthusiasm among base voters to the degree that Mr. Trump does.

Staff writer Sophie Hills contributed to this report.