United Auto Workers are waiting to support Biden for the time being

The United Auto Workers, a politically powerful labor union, plans to withhold its support for President Biden in the early stages of the 2024 race, according to an internal memo from its president to members on Tuesday.

The memo, written by Shawn Fain, the president of the Detroit-based union, said the United Auto Workers leadership had traveled to Washington last week to meet with officials from the Biden administration and “expressed our concerns about the transition from electric vehicles” had expressed that the president has pursued.

The memo underscores how some of Mr Biden’s boldest moves to fight climate change, which animate his Liberal base, could simultaneously weaken his political support among another crucial constituency. The UAW has shrunk in size in recent decades, but it still has about 400,000 active members, with a strong presence in Michigan, a critical battleground state for Democrats.

In April, the Biden administration proposed the country’s most ambitious climate rules yet, which would see two-thirds of new passenger cars be all-electric by 2032 — up from just 5.8 percent today. If passed, the rules could greatly reduce global warming from vehicle tailpipes, the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country. But they come at a cost to car workers, because it takes less than half the workers to assemble an all-electric vehicle than it does to build a gas-powered car.

In the memo, Mr. Fain “talking points” for members about why the union isn’t immediately behind Mr. Biden stood, writing that if companies receive federal grants, employees should be “compensated with top wages and benefits.”

“The transition to electric vehicles risks becoming a race to the bottom,” the memo reads, referring to electric vehicles. “We want national leaders to support us before we make any commitments.”

Mr. Fain won the UAW presidency this year as an insurgent candidate, defeating the incumbent, Ray Curry. Mr Fain promised a more confrontational path ahead of contract talks. In the memo, he notes that 150,000 auto workers will be vying for a new contract with the so-called Big Three auto companies in September, writing, “We will stand with anyone who assists our members in that fight.”

Labor support is an important part of Mr Biden’s political coalition and his portrayal of himself as a fighter for the middle class.

Within hours of Mr. Biden’s formal entry into the 2024 race, a number of leading unions supported Mr. Biden, including the Amalgamated Transit Union, the Service Employees International Union and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

“Several national unions were quick to approve it,” Mr. Fain in his memo. “The United Auto Workers is not giving approval yet.”

Mr Biden’s campaign proclaimed his support from other unions in a press release. Notably, Mr Biden’s first public appearance after announcing his re-election campaign last week was speeches at a labor conference in the nation’s capital.

“I’ve often said, Wall Street didn’t build America,” he told the cheering union crowd last week. “The middle class built America and unions built the middle class!”

The United Auto Workers, which historically supported the Democrats and supported Mr Biden in 2020, make it clear in the memo that it has no intention of supporting the Republican frontrunner, former President Donald J. Trump. Withholding formal approval for now appears instead to be a bid for leverage or concessions from the administration.

“Another Donald Trump presidency would be a disaster,” reads Mr. Fain That reports The Detroit News. “But our members need to see an alternative that delivers real results. We must organize our members behind a pro-worker, pro-climate and pro-democracy political program that can deliver results for the working class.”

Mr Biden has been trying to accelerate the transition to all-electric vehicles as an important part of his efforts to tackle climate change. A 2021 report from the International Energy Agency found that countries should stop selling new gasoline cars by 2035 to avert the deadliest impacts of a warming planet.

To help achieve that goal, Mr. Biden has pursued a policy of promoting electric vehicles.

The Biden administration’s proposed climate rules announced in April are designed to put legal teeth into consumer incentives, forcing automakers to produce and sell more electric vehicles. However, the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules are not yet final: they are open to public comment and may still be watered down or otherwise changed before finalization next year.

As the Biden administration prepared to unveil the new clean car rules last month, officials scheduled for Michael S. Regan, the head of the EPA, to announce the policy in Detroit surrounded by American-made all-electric vehicles.

But when motorists and the United Auto Workers learned the details of the proposed regulation, some became uncomfortable publicly supporting it, according to two people familiar with their thinking. According to the organization’s spokesman, none of the United Auto Workers were present at the unveiling, but representatives from Ford, General Motors and Mercedes-Benz were present.

And the setting was moved from Detroit to EPA headquarters in Washington.