Republicans woo union workers as party grapples with base’s blue-collar shift

Republicans in the House, the Senate, and the 2024 presidential field are showing their support for striking auto workers in the Midwest despite the party’s longtime pro-business tilt as blue-collar workers and voters without college degrees make up a bigger part of the base.

Earlier this month, 13,000 members of the United Auto Workers began striking the “Big Three” automakers (General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis) in Missouri, Michigan, and Ohio.

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In response, several Republicans have broken with the party’s traditional antagonism toward unions, showing their support for the rank-and-file members, if not the leadership.

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign had been closely watching the UAW as it led up to its strike, seizing the opportunity to make a somewhat rare campaign stop Wednesday evening in Michigan, where he will speak to former and current UAW members.

In a Tuesday statement, Trump remarked on President Joe Biden’s trip to the picket line in Michigan. “Joe Biden’s draconian and indefensible Electric Vehicle mandate will annihilate the U.S. auto industry and cost countless thousands of autoworkers their jobs,” he said. “The only thing Biden could say today that would help the striking autoworkers is to announce the immediate termination of his ridiculous mandate. Anything else is just a feeble and insulting attempt to distract American labor from this vicious Biden betrayal.”

“Crooked Joe should be ashamed to show his face before these hardworking Americans he is stabbing in the back. With Biden, it doesn’t matter what hourly wages they get, in three years there will be no autoworker jobs as they will all come out of China and other countries,” Trump said. “With me, there will be jobs and wages like you’ve never seen before. Our economy will grow!”

Biden’s historic move to join workers in the picket line came after Trump’s announcement to speak to UAW workers in Michigan.

Director of the Political Research Center at Suffolk University David Paleologos explained that this apparent head-to-head competition had developed because “it’s become a jump ball for the political parties when the ball was clearly held by Democratic candidates and Republicans couldn’t even get near getting at the ball.”

“You have this competition now for union voters, which is why you’re seeing not just Democrats standing with union members and union leaders — you have Republicans too,” he said.

“I do think these Republican actions probably pressured President Biden to walking the picket line and could spur Democrats to no longer treat its union base as an afterthought, which it typically has for a good number of decades now,” Princeton University professor of politics Paul Frymer said.

On Monday, Rep. John James (R-MI), who has endorsed Trump, wrote on social media: “Our UAW members helped build the Motor City. Today, I brought some breakfast to the picket line where some in my district are striking. While they strike, I am standing up to the Biden Admin and its EV mandates which would eliminate auto jobs and build China’s middle class on the backs of ours.”

He wasn’t the only Republican to physically visit picketing workers. “Privilege to visit the picket line in Wentzville today — these workers deserve better pay, better benefits, and a GUARANTEE their jobs will stay in America,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) wrote in a similar post. Both candidates included photographs of themselves talking to UAW striking workers.

This isn’t entirely new, though. “Working-class voters have found Republican candidates and Republican messaging appealing for decades,” according to University of Michigan political science professor Ken Kollman.

“These Republican politicians can find votes among rank-and-file union members, bypassing these people’s union leaders (who typically endorse Democrats, including Biden) by promoting a view of the world that government policies and corporate leaders together are responsible for job and wage losses,” he said. “True or not, these claims find resonance, and Republicans have since Richard Nixon made a conscious strategy to earn the votes of ‘hard hats’ who resent the growing income gaps and alleged tilting of the economy away from manufacturing and towards services and financially-driven decisions over corporate investments.”

While this has been a group sought out by Republicans in the past, it has become both more attainable and more pressing for the party. “To make this pivot more fully,” Frymer said, Republicans “are going to have to be more pro-union and support at least some union policies.”

What the Republicans are now doing is becoming more pro-worker and anti-trade, he pointed out. And it could be enough to win over a portion of union workers. “But union leadership has not been responsive to Republican forays (except for conservative unions such as police officers, prison guards) and I think it will take more concrete policy positions to draw more union members,” he said.

According to Paleologos, the union worker shift toward Republicans was accelerated by recent movements to defund the police. “Most of the time, policemen, firefighters were natural Democratic voters,” he said. “And so that was the first sort of inflection point where unions, police, fire, or public safety, border [officers] began to veer away from the Democratic Party and began to keep their minds open to Republicans and other candidates in nonpartisan elections.”

“Now it’s not just police, fire, border unions,” he said. “Now it’s electricians, plumbers, you know, all the different types of trade unions are less inclined to be voters automatically for Democrats.”

The move toward Republicans was additionally a result of Trump’s proven talent for speaking to workers. “Trump and Republicans do proportionately better with anyone that has less than a college experience,” Paleologos noted.

As for Republican support emerging for union workers, he asked, “What’s the downside?”

One development Paleologos specifically pointed out is that “the UAW brought the parties together.”

“You’ve got Joe Biden standing alongside Republicans and others who are voicing their support of the workers,” he said. “So I guess that’s probably the silver lining.”

To really evaluate how far Republicans have moved on the topic of unions, Frymer said, “They should put the Pro Act on the floor for a vote today and see how these Republicans vote.” The Pro Act would strengthen the rights of unions, particularly those for collective bargaining, while simultaneously weakening “right to work” laws, which have been traditionally supported by Republicans and exist in more than half of the United States. In the Democratic-controlled House, the measure passed in a party-line vote, 224 to 194, in 2020. The bill didn’t reach the Republican-controlled Senate floor for a vote, however.

While Republicans have expressed support for the striking workers, it’s unclear whether they would support expanding union rights, specifically as outlined in the Pro Act.

In a statement Tuesday, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said: “Make no mistake, Biden and Democrats do not care about Americans who are struggling, especially when they’re struggling as a result of failed liberal policies.”

“Biden’s war on the American energy industry and auto manufacturers got us here, and Michigan Democrats are prioritizing the primary calendar to keep Biden in office over Michiganders. This is nothing more than a photo op, and shame on Biden for attempting to gaslight Michigan families who are footing the bill for his green energy campaign,” she said of Biden’s Midwest stop.

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The 2024 Republican presidential candidates have followed a similar messaging guideline, blaming the strikes on Biden’s energy and economic policies and avoiding the politics of unions. Other than Trump, candidates have avoided getting too involved in the union dispute, walking the line between union support and traditional Republican beliefs.

Diverging from some of her opponents, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, whose home state of South Carolina is a “right to work” state, reminded voters that she was a “union buster” as governor. Other candidates haven’t been willing to embrace the anti-union position in a realigning Republican Party.