Autoworkers' strike shifts into second gear

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Sep 18, 2023 View in browser   By Nick Niedzwiadek QUICK FIX TAKING THE WHEEL: The United Auto Workers strike against Detroit’s Big Three car makers is underway, and now the operative questions are: for how long and what will it take to reach a deal? “Progress is slow and I don’t really want to say we’re closer,” UAW President Shawn Fain said Sunday on MSNBC. It is certainly shaping up to be a work stoppage that’s better measured in weeks, not days. Both camps’ interests favor digging in their heels, at least for the time being, lest they be seen as capitulating to the other. Since UAW made its opening move — to strike at one plant of each automaker, with a standing threat to expand at any moment — Ford temporarily laid off some 600 workers at the plant the union targeted and GM said it expects to idle a Kansas plant due to the strike at a nearby facility in the coming days due to the disruption of the work stoppages. While the public rhetoric surrounding the situation remains heated, the parties are continuing to negotiate behind closed doors. UAW on Saturday said it had “reasonably productive conversations” with Ford, and Stellantis over the weekend released its latest offer, which included a 21-percent raise over the life of the deal. However the union blasted Stellantis — the parent company of brands like Jeep and Chrysler — for dangling ahead of the strike the possibility of reopening an assembly line in Belvidere, Ill., that shuttered indefinitely earlier this year. “That’s how they see these workers. A bargaining chip,” Fain said in a statement. Work stoppages are unpredictable, as are their ripple effects. Delayed car deliveries could boost competitors like Tesla, as The Wall Street Journal suggested, or afford time to iron out internal issues, which Reuters reported could be a possibility for General Motors’ electric vehicles. The union has made a point to explicitly link its demands to the plump pay packages the automakers’ top executives received in recent years and dare the companies to justify why workers deserve less — a line on which Democratic allies in Congress have been happy to sing chorus, as our Zachary Warmbrodt reported. On Friday, President Joe Biden made his most full-throated comments to date in support of the UAW and directed acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and senior adviser Gene Sperling to assist where possible. There’s concern, both in and outside the White House, that the standoff is one of several delicate situations that could blow back on the president and his reelection efforts if things go awry, per our Sam Sutton. Conservatives and business groups have fanned the flames, casting those anxieties as a problem of Biden and fellow Democrats’ own making given their efforts to bolster union’s power — with being strikes a natural consequence. Republicans are also test driving messaging in hopes of steering the strike to their political advantage, our Myah Ward and Ally Mutnick report. At the same time UAW and those on the pro-union left have implored Biden to do more to support the workers’ cause, and instead of fretting about strikes’ economic costs redirect the blame for them on companies for shortchanging their workers in negotiations. “Who the president is now, who the former president was or the presidents before them isn’t going to win this fight,” Fain said on CBS’ “Face The Nation.” “This fight is all about one thing — it’s about workers winning their fair share of economic justice, instead of being left behind as they have been in the last decades.” For your consideration: “Here is what Detroit automakers have to give the UAW to get a deal, experts say,” from the Detroit Free Press. GOOD MORNING. It’s Monday, Sept. 18. Welcome back to Morning Shift, your go-to tipsheet on labor and employment-related immigration. It’s been 188 days since the Senate received Julie Su’s nomination. Send feedback, tips and exclusives to nniedzwiadek@politico.com and oolander@politico.com. Follow us on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @NickNiedz and @oliviaolanderr.   JOIN 9/19 FOR A TALK ON BUILDING THE NEW AMERICAN ECONOMY: The United States is undergoing a generational economic transformation, with a renewed bipartisan emphasis on manufacturing. Join POLITICO on Sept. 19th for high-level conversations that examine the progress and chart the next steps in preserving America’s economic preeminence, driving innovation and protecting jobs. REGISTER HERE.     Want to receive this newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories. Around the Agencies SCHEDULE SETTING: The Office of Personnel Management on Friday proposed regulations that would make it significantly harder for future administrations to purge the civil service and replace them with political appointees. Former President Donald Trump late in his term pushed out a plan — shorthand “Schedule F” — reclassifying sizable swaths of federal workers in policy-development roles “not normally subject to change as a result of a Presidential transition” to a new category that exempted them from merit-system job protections. Almost immediately upon taking office, President Joe Biden reversed that initiative before it could take force, and OPM’s proposal is a step toward further entrenching that position (though it could of course still be unwound by later rulemaking). “Career federal employees deliver critical services for Americans in every community,” OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said in a release. “Prior attempts to needlessly politicize their work risked harming the American people.” Trump has made clear the federal workforce remains in his sights if he returns to the White House, and other Republican presidential candidates have similar aims to take a buzzsaw to the Washington bureaucracy that civil service protections would encumber. OPM’s key change: The rule would ensure that, in the event of a classification change, a federal employee “retains the status and civil service protections they had already accrued” unless they voluntarily give it up by taking a position exempt from them. Unions representing federal workers quickly cheered OPM’s proposal as a bulwark against the return of Schedule F or anything like it. “This is about making sure the American people are served by federal employees who were hired through an open, competitive process using criteria based on skills and expertise, not political affiliation,” National Treasury Employees Union President Doreen Greenwald said in a statement. IMMIGRATION VISAS FOR ME, NOT THEE: Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has campaigned on ending use of H-1B temporary worker visas. Left unstated is that in his business career, he regularly took advantage of the program to bring in high-skilled immigrants, our Myah Ward reports. Ramaswamy’s former company, Roivant Sciences, sought and received authorization for H-1B visas 29 times from 2018 to 2023. Nevertheless, Ramaswamy says the lottery-based program is “bad for everyone involved” and needs to be gutted in favor of a more “meritocratic” immigration system. His campaign also downplayed the dissonance of utilizing a supposedly deleterious program. “Vivek believes that regulations overseeing the U.S. energy sector are badly broken, but he still uses water and electricity,” Ramaswamy’s campaign spokesperson said in a statement to POLITICO. “This is the same.” More immigration news: “They’re immigrants, farmworkers, and new moms. And they’re facing postpartum depression at higher rates,” from STAT. Unions UI WHILE ON STRIKE: The California legislature passed a bill that would allow striking workers to be eligible for unemployment insurance benefits, The Sacramento Bee reports. The legislation would apply to those who have been on the picket line for at least 14 days. “It’s unclear whether Newsom will sign the bill. The governor dodged the question at a Politico forum earlier this week, but noted his concerns about the nearly $18 billion in debt that the unemployment fund currently carries.” Food for thought: Whether this bill would have passed if not for the extended Hollywood and Los Angeles hotel workers’ strikes that have increased the salience of the issue in California? More union news: “Drew Barrymore, ‘The Talk’ Pausing Talk Show Returns Amid Strike Pushback,’” from The Hollywood Reporter. IN THE STATES NO PASSWORDS FOR YOU: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last week signed legislation prohibiting employers from requesting or demanding a worker or job applicants’ personal social media information. NY A836, which takes effect in mid-March, is designed to bar employers from soliciting social media passwords or other sensitive information. “Requesting and demanding this information constitutes a serious invasion of privacy on behalf of the employer and may lead to issues of unfair and discriminatory hiring and admissions practices,” Assemblymember Jeff Dinowitz, who sponsored the bill, said in a release. More than 25 other states already have similar protections in place, according to Justia. More Empire State news: “New York employers must include pay rates in job ads under new state law,” from The Associated Press.   JOIN US ON 9/20 FOR A TALK ON TRANSFORMING HEALTHCARE BILLING: Bipartisan legislation in the House and Senate would align costs for services across hospitals and doctors’ offices and reduce out-of-pocket spending that could potentially save the federal government billions of dollars. Can this legislation survive a polarized Congress? Join POLITICO on Sept. 20 to explore this and whether site-neutral payments and billing transparency policies could help ease health care costs. REGISTER HERE.     In the Workplace A municipal employee in Buffalo has been on paid leave for the better part of the decade after being accused of manipulating payroll to line her pockets, “earning” more than half a million dollars over that span while holding another job for a majority of that time. The employee was only ordered back to work after the Investigative Post, a local nonprofit news organization, began poking around. Read more here. More workplace news: “Elon Musk Is a ‘Free Speech Absolutist,’ Except at Work,” from Bloomberg. HAPPENING TODAY At 1 p.m. The Labor Department inducts the El Monte Thai garment workers to its Hall of Honor, 200 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. what we're reading — “New, consolidated USPS facilities are operating smoothly, but not yet delivering on improved working conditions,” from Government Executive. — “More than 60,000 Kaiser Permanente workers vote to authorize strike,” from CNBC. — “The Iceman Runneth,” from Business Insider. — “TikTok Rankles Employees With Return-to-Office Tracking Tools,” from The New York Times. THAT’S YOUR SHIFT!   Follow us on Twitter Nick Niedzwiadek @nickniedz Olivia Olander @oliviaolanderr   Follow us

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