The drama keeps coming with the current United Auto Workers’ strike against General Motors. The latest rumor is that the White House is now weighing in on the matter, as a new report from Politico indicates that the Trump administration is looking to lay out an agreement that would effectively reopen GM’s Lordstown Plant in Ohio, which was shuddered back in March.
Citing anonymous sources “close to the matter,” the Politico report says that the move would essentially place White House support with the UAW camp, which, if successful, could help Trump to win votes in Michigan and Ohio ahead of an upcoming bid for reelection.
The report goes on to say that National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, as well as White House trade and manufacturing adviser Peter Navarro are involved in talks between GM and the UAW.
The new Politco report went live on the second day of the GM strike. Union leaders announced the strike over the weekend after contract negotiations failed to result in an agreement between the automaker and worker union.
The new Politico report follows a statement from President Trump in which he expressed sadness over the GM strike, later tweeting that the automaker and UAW need to “get together and make a deal!”
Trump has thus far remained fairly neutral on the GM strike, although he has expressed some support for the UAW, stating “I’d like to see it work out but I don’t want General Motors building plants in China and Mexico. I don’t want these big massive auto plants built in other countries and I don’t think they’ll be doing that anymore.”
Since the Politico report came out, White House officials, as well as GM and the UAW, have all denied its validity.
However, Trump has been an outspoken critic of GM in the past, and it would’t be altogether surprising to see the White House officially wade into the GM strike as the UAW and GM struggle to hammer together an agreement.
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Source: Politico
Comments
The White House has a huge following among autoworkers. Certainly more support from the workers than from UAW leadership.
IMO, UAW leadership passed on a great deal to keep two factories open and increase manufacturing investment in the US. UAW leadership wants to appear strong to justify their own perks….and their own upcoming legal defense against federal bribery charges.
The UAW is getting way too greedy for their own good. They better recognize all the foreign plants here in the US don’t have unions and GM already has $13/hr higher wage/benefit costs than they do! These guys make $63/hr wage/benefits. WTF are they striking for?! None of the rest of us make this! They need to get a grip. And of course slump would get involved if it will help make him look good and get some votes, tho like all the “deals” made, he’s far too ADHD to pay attention for more than 3mins on anything but fauxnews. he has his people do them and then just takes the credit. he couldn’t tell you anything about the china deal or any other, except they are the greatest ever, “believe me” hahaha!
The foreign owned auto plants don’t have unions?
What a shame! Get up and help unionizing them!
Unionize the South! That must be a central campaign of the US-ameracan labor movement and their friends.
Not going to happen. Right-to-work legislation is in place, which means that even if their plants were unionized, you can’t keep workers who don’t want to be a part of the union from working on the lines. The UAW is an ‘all or nothing’ organization. They’ll want the entire plant for themselves.
Furthermore, the fact that these plants aren’t unionized are proof that auto manufacturers can and do offer suitable working environments for the workers.
I also put it that unionized plants contribute nothing to the market value of a car either, and may in fact lower the final products market value. I don’t see the products of non-unionized plants reaching for rebates or having to put cash on the hood to move unsold units at the end of the MY.
Then of course, there’s the workers uniforms….but that’s for another time.
Grawdaddy just says that the USA is a capitalist (and racist) dictatorship.
But fact is, that workers in the USA have fought for and won rights to organize and have a limited say on their working conditions. One of the most successfull periods have been the 1930ies which was when the CIO, the Congress of Industrial Organisations, was formed which was much superior to the older AFL, which organized on a craft basis, i.e. with a multitude of unions in one single industry, ignoring the wisdom that unity is strength, and that in injury to one is an injury to all.
If the cops try to force the entry of scabs in a given plant, the workers have to stand against that, and united on a state and national scale to move away the anti-worker legislation mentioned by Grawdaddy.
When we are united, only the sky is the limit. And with planes and space stations, not even the sky.
Workers are the majority in a modern capitalist society. We have only to overcome all the propaganda which wants to divide and thus weaken us.
Trump is one of the worst agitators to pit workers against workers in order to better fool and exploit them.
Trump will not be re-elected.
Maybe. Maybe not.
As usual, it’s going to come down to who is running against the current administration.
Pick someone terrible, like Democrats are really good at, and he’ll be re-elected.
Trump has personally left a turd in every American’s mailbox.
He will not be re-elected.
You’re leaving a turd every time you open your mouth.
Did you also say he would not be elected?
He was installed, not elected. It won’t happen again. Union, YES!
I for my part was sure that Trump would win in 2016, when I saw Hillary Clinton say on TV “but America IS great! We are already great!”
But even then, Trump did not get a majority of the popular vote, he was at least one million (or more) votes short of a majority. It is only the reactionary electoral college, and especially the “the winner take it all” in some states which got Trump to the post of POTUS.
The electoral college might have made sense in the time when people traveled thru that vast country by horse and carriage, but today no longer. Besides, it was also one of the means to protect the slavocracy against the majority of people.
Trumps electoral success shows that he is the symbol of the decline of the US empire, the central word of his campaign being “again”, the open acknowledgement that the USA is an empire in decline, that it WAS once great, but is no more.
It remains to say that Trump’s idea of restoring the glory of the US empire only hastens its decline.
Politics is something more than real estate speculation and humiliation TV shows à la “You are fired”. In Politics one has to deal with millions and hundreds and thousands of millions of people, all of them with their own ideas how to improve their lives or fight back degradations of it, whereas Trump can only deal one to one, as if he is concluding a sale of a house.
Maybe. Maybe not.
does trump support unionizing labor at his hotels? or is this another case of do as i say and not as i do hypocrisy?
Isn’t larry kudlow back on the botle???