By Luis de Jesus
26 Sep 2023, 17:20 PM EDT
This Tuesday, US President Joe Biden joined pickets of automotive sector strikers in Michigan, who are demanding better working conditions. The Democrat arrived in Detroit at the invitation of Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers organization.
“You saved the automotive industry. They made a lot of sacrifices. Companies were in trouble. Now they are doing incredibly well and know that it should be for you too,” the president said to the protesters.
Biden, who received applause with a megaphone, cap and casual clothes, said that it was not Wall Street that lifted up the United States, but the middle class and the unions. “That is a fact. Let’s continue. They deserve what they have earned. And they have earned a lot more than what they are being paid,” he added.
Biden arrived in Detroit around 12:00 pm and was received at the airport by Fain himself, EFE reported. This trip precedes the one that former Republican President Donald Trump will make on Wednesday, who will be absent from the debate in California of the conservative candidates for the 2024 presidential elections and who will arrive in the city in Michigan even though he does not have the support of the social movement. .
Fain became president of the union at the beginning of the year and, for the first time in the history of the American automotive industry, called a simultaneous strike at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis plants, known as the Big Three of Detroit.
“Today the enemy is not a foreign country thousands of miles away. He is right here in our own zone. It is corporate greed,” said the union leader during the pickets. “Managers believe that the future belongs to them. It belongs to automobile workers. We do the real work. We have the power,” he added.
The United Auto Workers demands salary increases of 40%, distributed over the next four years, the elimination of salary differences between plant workers of the same companies, greater guarantees of job security and recovering the aid they had until 2009 to compensate for the increase in the cost of living, noted EFE.
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