The Democrat takeover of Michigan in the last election is yielding more harmful consequences. The Detroit-based United Auto Workers (UAW) union has a new far-Left, anti-Trump president, who was elected by fewer than 500 votes in the runoff after losing the first ballot. This new UAW President Shawn Fain unleashed a first-ever strike against all three Michigan automakers. While denying that he is wrecking the economy, Fain declared that “the truth is we are going to wreck the billionaire economy,” and he promised “economic and social justice at the Big Three.”
Fain’s initial demands on the Detroit Three would have doubled their labor expenses, which are already far higher than at Tesla and other auto manufacturers. About half of cars sold in the U.S. are assembled at foreign-owned plants whose American workers have consistently rejected the UAW’s attempts to organize and represent them. Impervious to this, Fain warned prior to the strike that “either you stand for a billionaire class where everybody else gets left behind, or you stand for the working class, the working-class people vote.”
Yet it is not the billionaire class that is choking off growth in auto workers’ wages, but the war against the traditional car that is being waged by liberals in California and the Biden administration. California has banned sales of Detroit’s traditional cars beginning in 2035, and California recently sued the oil producing companies on which cheap gasoline depends.
The sands of political affiliation are ever-shifting, and Democrats need to start understanding that their identity politics narrative will come back to haunt them if they aren’t careful. Choosing between the interests of the climate hysteria contingent and the union workers certainly isn’t in the interests of the Democrat Party, yet these are the consequences of building your worldview on a spectrum of oppression. The real solution is not to put climate interests first or unions first, but rather to put America first. That is the shortest path to prosperity for all, and especially for auto workers whose jobs have been threatened by overseas interests.
This post originally appeared at https://www.phyllisschlafly.com/liberalism-and-conservatism/economy/democrats-suffer-from-worldview-reckoning/
Phyllis Schlafly