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This weekend, Neil Cavuto of Fox News asked former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley what should have been an easy question about the ongoing UAW strike. Donald Trump had already made it clear how to respond from the right: Say something vaguely supportive about autoworkers, then pivot to claiming the Biden administration will send all their jobs to China by pushing electric vehicles. Instead, Haley portrayed workers in the largest industry in Michigan—a key battleground state that Trump won in 2016—as greedy and ungrateful.
“It tells you that when you have the most pro-union president and he touts that he is emboldening the unions, this is what you get,” Haley replied. “The union is asking for a 40 percent raise; the companies have come back with a 20 percent raise. I think any of the taxpayers would love to have a 20 percent raise and think that’s great.”
Ford, GM, and Stellantis’ offer to increase pay by about 20 percent is less impressive after taking into account that it would happen over four years. The proposal comes after the Big Three made roughly $250 billion in profits over the past decade, increased CEO pay by 40 percent, and booked an additional $21 billion of profit in the first half of this year. Inflation has eroded wage gains UAW members made in their last contract, but the companies have refused to restore the cost-of-living adjustments that workers gave up to help the Big Three survive bankruptcy and the Great Recession. The taxpayers who make Ford’s vehicles would likely envy the 1 percent effective federal income tax rate the company paid in 2021.
Haley, who as governor in 2014 said she didn’t want unions in South Carolina because “we don’t want to taint the water,” didn’t stop there. “I was a union buster,” she told Cavuto. “I didn’t want to bring in companies that were unionized simply because I didn’t want to have that change the environment in our state. We very much watched out for workers, but the way that we watched out for workers was we didn’t encourage middlemen between companies and their workers.”
Cavuto found himself in the unusual position of having to push back against a Fox News guest for being too anti-labor. “It’s very tough language governor,” he said, stuttering as he tried to process what he’d just heard. “I’m just wondering how union workers who are hearing you now might feel about that.” He reminded Haley that Ronald Reagan had done well with union members.
The original “Reagan Democrats” were in Macomb County, Michigan. Many of them were autoworkers. In 2016, Trump flipped Macomb—defeating Hillary Clinton by nearly 50,000 votes four years after Barack Obama carried the county by more than 15,000 votes. Without Macomb, Clinton would have won the state. In 2020, exit polls showed 40 percent of people in union households voting for Trump. For context, 41 percent of self-identified independents—a group no politician goes out of their way to insult—backed the former president. Trump knows what he’s doing by traveling to Michigan next week to speak to current and former union members.
More impressively, Haley has managed to be only the second-most anti-union presidential candidate from South Carolina. At a campaign event on Monday, Sen. Tim Scott got his own question about the strike. “I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike,” Scott explained in an apparent reference to the 1981 strike by air traffic controllers. “He said, ‘You strike, you’re fired.’ Simple concept to me. To the extent that we can use that once again, absolutely.” (Reagan fired more than 11,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, even though he’d vowed to help them while successfully seeking their union’s endorsement during the 1980 campaign.)
Tim Scott on UAW strike:
“I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were gonna strike. You strike, you’re fired. Simple concept to me.” pic.twitter.com/ke4hzSOTnp
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) September 19, 2023
It is illegal to fire private-sector workers who are exercising their labor rights by going on strike. Nevertheless, it is helpful to know that Scott believes they should be fired. Not surprisingly, given the posture of its current and former elected officials, South Carolina has the lowest unionization rate in the country at 1.7 percent. That rate is about a sixth of the national average and well below other states in the South. As Haley can attest, union busting often works.
Trump’s speech in Detroit will happen at the same time as the second GOP debate. It sets up the possibility that Trump will be proclaiming his hollow support for striking autoworkers at the same time his distant rivals are boasting about being union busters. Appropriately enough, as Trump speaks in Detroit, the rest of the field will be assembled in California at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
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There is a great podcast by the Daily on the firing of air traffic controllers by Reagan. There are now enormous issues because such a large group had to be hired in the 1980s which are now all retiring at the same time threatening flight safety. Long-run consequences of conservative policy.
My brother is an ATC and the stories he tells are pretty bleak. They are in no way prepared for the retirement book that is coming.
We very much watched out for workers, but the way that we watched out for workers was we didn’t encourage middlemen between companies and their workers.
This is most definitely not watching out for workers. Does she honestly think workers have as much power as employers in negotiations?
She’s lying to stupid people.
And it works every damn time 😭
Yeah it’s not a middleman. It’s an advocate. I bet she wants the accused to work with the police without any middlemen lawyers too.
They like to borrow from Libertarian ideals here. Everyone should be a rugged individualist and only take what they can get for themselves. Collective bargaining to counter the overwhelming influence of employer power is, in their minds, immoral. Somehow.
Most employers are corporations which are also collectively bargaining. If she wants to end corporations I’m down with that.
Employers have the whole political system to exploit against workers. I’m sure Haley’s “Stand for America” PAC is full of max limit donors who share a material interest in exploiting workers in certain industries.
There is very little in this world as directly compatible with Libertarian ideals as a union. Libertarianism is all about groups you consent to join and then have a say in the actions of because people are stronger together.
What Libertarianism opposes is groups you are forced to join without your consent that you then have no say in the actions of.
There’s more than one type of libertarian. There are the leftists that are libertarians. And then there are privileged right wing man child who pretend.
I don’t always agree with actual libertarians. But they’re usually fairly rational and honest. The right wingers however are incapable of rationality or honesty. It’s always good however to check which is which first however.
I like how the Fox News person (I would never call them a journalist) had to push back.
“It’s very tough language governor,” he said, stuttering as he tried to process what he’d just heard. “I’m just wondering how union workers who are hearing you now might feel about that.
Basically like “Are you fucking crazy?? You can’t say the quiet part out loud! We’ve been tricking these gullible morons for years into thinking Republicans give a shit about them!”
The verbal levees have burst. There’s no filter anymore. It’s all saying the quiet part out loud.
Employers effectively organize to compensate their workers the least the job market and laws allow for, same with working conditions. Employees paid with their lives for the right to organize, strike, and collectively bargain, and these politicians and their corporate donors want to return to those days.
The last thing they want is for people to know what collective bargaining actually looks like, and the role arbitrators play, and that both unions and employers really don’t want their companies to go out of business. Collective bargaining isn’t about sapping the company dry, it’s about looking at the books and coming up with an offer linked to that financial data, else it’s not going to hold up in arbitration. Normally the union will present something like, “based on the company’s finances this is our aggressive but reasonable offer,” and the company will negotiate and concessions will be made, “we can’t match your request for this raise increase but we can offer this and increase vacation accruals, etc.” An arbitrator may be brought in, and either side has to ensure their negotiations are taken seriously by the third party. Then while the lawyers are duking it out, the employer will run a heavily skewed PR circus to paint the union as unreasonable, the company at the brink of failure, their PACs and politicians drumming up fear that our poor beloved employer is being bullied by these corrupt gangster unions. It becomes another political spectacle for everyone to participate and comment on. Eventually an offer is accepted and the tune changes, because the employer then has to impress their shareholders at how well they countered the union, and how stable and strong they are in the arrangement.
Yeah the alternative to unionization is revolution. Liberal unions are a means to maintain capitalism. Crush them and eventually workers will be willing to charge machine gun nests again. Already people are choosing not to reproduce because they can’t afford to raise children, and so the response seems to be to deny the ability to prevent reproduction without chastity. Well what do they think will happen when the armed workers cannot feed their children or organize for better pay?
A lot has been done to pacify unions plus liberal erasure of any notion of class consciousness. Capital also co-opts and commodifies ideas of “revolution” that people essentially buy in to as a form of consumption. As things degrade it will cause more social unrest but I don’t think that guarantees a revolution, cause most of the times it doesn’t.
You know what? I think these two morons are onto something! Let’s test out firing active politicians: not approving military appointments because you’re a petty attention-seeking fuck? Fired! Not gonna pass budgets as a negotiation tactic and act like diplomatic terrorists? Fired! Unwilling to address the problem of gun deaths in our country? Fired! Maternal mortality rates, hunger and homelessness, failed privatized energy grids, race-motivated judicial punishments, horseshit history getting pushed into textbooks all continuing rampant and free? Fired! FIRED! FIRED! FIRED!
FIRED!
“It tells you that when you have the most pro-union president and he touts that he is emboldening the unions, this is what you get,” Haley replied. “The union is asking for a 40 percent raise; the companies have come back with a 20 percent raise. I think any of the taxpayers would love to have a 20 percent raise and think that’s great.”
Yeah it’s the unions that are greedy, not the CEOs whose individual compensation increases could pay for many workers in and of itself. 🙄
I wish we could hear their opinions on police unions.
You mean the only unions in the country their anti union rhetoric makes any sense when discussing? Surely they have concise logical stances that don’t clash with their statements here.
Republican voters will never stop shooting themselves in the dick. Haley and Scott have nothing to worry about.
It might help them win in the primaries, but it will hurt in the general election. Having the unions on their side isn’t the guarantee it once was, but they could be a spoiler.
The majority of Americans support the UAW strike and their demands, so this’ll surely go well for them.
Inflation has eroded wage gains UAW members made in their last contract, but the companies have refused to restore the cost-of-living adjustments that workers gave up to help the Big Three survive bankruptcy and the Great Recession.
This is why you don’t give corporations anything. It only ever goes one way.
