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Obama backs UAW strikers demanding WHOPPING 36% pay hike: ‘Time to do right’

September 17, 2023 | | Print Article

Former President Barack Obama has predictably come out in support of the ongoing United Auto Workers’ strike.

“Fourteen years ago, when the big three automakers were struggling to stay afloat, my administration and the American people stepped in to support them. So did the auto workers in the UAW who sacrificed pay and benefits to help get the companies back on their feet,” he tweeted Saturday morning.

“Now that our carmakers are enjoying robust profits, it’s time to do right by those same workers so the industry can emerge more united and competitive than ever,” he added.

Look:

It’s true that the Obama administration helped Ford during the auto crisis. However, the administration helped the manufacturer by giving them a loan, not by just handing them free money.

“Ford previously took out a $5.9 billion loan under the program in 2009. That loan was fully repaid as of last year, according to the DoE,” CNN reported this past June.

Conversely, the UAW is seeking huge blatant handouts for its workers.

Specifically, they reportedly want a whopping 36 percent pay raise over the course of four years despite already earning $18 to $32 an hour. And they want their work week reduced to just 32 hours versus 40. In other words, they want to earn a lot more for working a lot less.

And they want all this even as automakers are taking a huge hit because of their forced investments into electric vehicles, which are something few people want.

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“I will tell you what I’m hearing around the country is that auto workers are very concerned about Joe Biden’s Green New Deal, heavy-handed effort to use taxpayer dollars to drive these automotive companies into electric vehicle production,” former Vice President Mike Pence said Friday, according to Bloomberg.

“I mean, you have 145,000 workers out there that many of them have built a lifetime of making gasoline-powered cars, and suddenly they see Joe Biden and liberal Democrats pushing down this electric vehicle agenda,” he added.

It’s an agenda that’s costing auto manufacturers oodles —  oodles that could otherwise potentially be spent compensating their workers more.

“There’s nothing cheap about developing, manufacturing, delivering and investing in the future of electric vehicles (EVs). Ford Motor Co. is finding this out the hard way — just the same as many other automakers — with the company’s EV unit projected to lose about $3 billion in 2023,” Benzinga reported in March.

The site also noted that earlier this year Ford’s CEO had said during an earnings call that he’d underestimated the expenses that would arise from investing in electric electric.

“We didn’t know that our wiring harness for Mach-E was 1.6 kilometers longer than it needed to be. We didn’t know it’s 70 pounds heavier and that that’s [an extra] $300 a battery. We didn’t know that we underinvested in braking technology to save on the battery size,” he said.

Benzinga notes that these are the “growing pains” of an industry “still in its infancy.”

That said, many pushed back on Obama’s tweet by drawing attention to these “growing pains” and noting that forcing automakers to pay more right now would be a problem.

Look:

Vivek Saxena
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