The United Auto Workers union is expected to consider endorsing President Biden as early as Sunday at a conference in Washington, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Fresh off a 46-day strike against Detroit automakers that prompted a groundbreaking new contract with 25 percent wage hikes, the UAW is also in talks with the White House to invite Biden to speak at next week’s annual legislative conference, two separate people familiar with the matter confirmed.
The invitation would help reinforce Biden’s claim to be the most “pro-union” president, weeks after the Teamsters’ chief union leader met with former president Donald Trump.
The Biden campaign and the United Auto Workers declined to comment.
The UAW’s endorsement process involves a vote from the union’s international executive board, made up of 14 officers and regional directors. One person familiar with the matter said the board is set to discuss presidential endorsements Sunday at the conference. The person said he believes the board will then vote on the endorsement.
The autoworker union’s endorsement has outsize political implications because of its influence in Michigan, a key battleground state in the 2024 presidential race; Biden narrowly won the state in 2020.
The UAW, which represents about 400,000 workers across a variety of industries, including 150,000 autoworkers, has been flexing its political muscle recently as it struck against Ford, General Motors and Jeep-maker Stellantis, prompting Biden to become the first sitting president to visit a picket line. The labor action also brought Trump to Michigan to court autoworkers.
Biden has frequently invoked his ties to labor unions, while straining at times to make inroads with working-class union members. His biggest accomplishments for the labor movement include approving trillions of dollars in spending on infrastructure, semiconductor and climate packages that incentivize companies to hire union workers, and installing a lawyer at the helm of the National Labor Relations Board who has made it easier for workers to join unions.
Biden has received a stream of earlier-than-typical endorsements this election cycle, including a June endorsement from the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, and 17 unions. But a handful of influential unions, including the UAW, the Teamsters, the American Postal Workers Union and the International Association of Fire Fighters, have so far abstained, opting to wield their endorsement as leverage in Washington.
Each of these unions appears to have a separate set of reasons for taking its time to endorse, though most are expected to eventually throw their support behind Biden, people with knowledge of union strategy say. The UAW, with its militant new leader, Shawn Fain, used its endorsement as leverage in last year’s autoworker strike, which spotlighted worker concerns that the transition to electric vehicles, a key priority of the Biden administration, would led to the deterioration of autoworker jobs.
“Our endorsements are going to be earned. They’re not going to be freely given, as they have been in the past,” Fain told The Washington Post last summer.
Earlier this month, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien held a private meeting with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate, described in a social media post that included a photo of the two posing together. The meeting drew the ire of some local Teamsters leaders, though the union, which represents some 1.3 million workers and recently scored a lucrative contract for hundreds of thousands of UPS members, has also held talks with a variety of presidential candidates, including independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson (R). The Teamsters endorsed Biden several months before the general election in 2020.
Former Biden labor adviser Seth Harris said new leaders at UAW and the Teamsters, who both ran as reform candidates, have taken their time to endorse because they won their elections by “promising [more] membership involvement” in union decision-making.
“These unions are going through a process that takes time,” Harris said. “In the case of the Teamsters, they’ve got to be respectful of the bloc of members who are Trump supporters or Republicans who are not necessarily hardcore Trump supporters.”
The left-leaning postal workers’ union, which endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016 and has called for a cease-fire in Gaza, is gearing up for a major contract fight this year, involving 200,000 workers, and appears to be wary of giving up its influence at a key moment.
The International Association of Fire Fighters, which represents some 330,000 members, was one of the first unions to endorse Biden in 2020. That was under its previous president, a close Biden ally. The union, which has since elected a new president, has also refrained from making an early endorsement.
Trump has also called himself “pro worker,” describing himself as an ally of the working class, while also supporting numerous policies as president that diminished union power. He has received few union endorsements outside of law enforcement unions. His visit to Michigan during the UAW strike featured a rally with autoworkers at a nonunion shop.