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A WORKING CLASS SUSCEPTIBLE TO TRUMP NEEDS MUCH MORE FROM BIDEN  
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Les Leopold
March 13, 2024
Common Dreams
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_ Standing on a picket line, as Biden did with the UAW, is important.
But that cannot be the limit of efforts to make the economy work
better for working people. _

President Joe Biden joins striking members of the United Auto Workers
on the picket line outside the GM's Willow Run Distribution Center in
Bellville, Mich., September 26, 2023., Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

 

Like it or not, it’s political Groundhog Day
[[link removed](film)]. The Biden/Trump
looped tape is rolling, and the contest will again center on the Blue
Wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Working-class
voters will be key.

In 2020, Biden squeaked through while receiving just 36.2 percent of
the white working-class vote, according to research for my
book, _Wall Street’s War on Workers_ [[link removed]].
That’s down from Obama’s 40 percent, and Bill Clinton’s 50
percent. It’s sad that the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt – the
party of the working class – now attracts so few working-class
voters. There also is troubling evidence that the Biden campaign
is losing ground
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Black and Hispanic working-class voters.

That’s the reality. But how can Biden change it in 2024?

For starters, he shouldn’t be bragging about a booming economy. For
many working-class folks who get bounced from job to job, the
so-called Biden boom doesn’t feel all that glorious. What Biden and
nearly all elected officials fail to grasp is that American workers
are suffering through waves of mass layoffs, more than 30 million
losing their jobs over the last 30 years. That includes 260,000 in
the booming high-tech industry [[link removed]] last year
alone, with another 50,000 discharged so far this year.

Biden made a start in his State of the Union address by highlighting
how his administration helped the United Autoworkers (UAW) keep open
the Belvidere, Illinois, Stellantis facility, saving over 1,000 jobs
and perhaps adding thousands more battery manufacturing jobs in the
future. But the UAW’s effective strike against Stellantis was the
savior, not the Biden administration.

The President should take a page from Donald Trump to directly
intervene to stop a mass layoff and take _all_ the credit for it. In
2016-17, Trump pressured the Carrier Air Conditioning to keep 800 jobs
in Indiana rather than moving them to Mexico. Polling shows
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60 percent of all voters said that the Carrier deal gave them a more
favorable view of Trump. Only 9 percent said it made them view Trump
less favorably.

There are many jobs for Biden to save right now in the Blue Wall
states.

Stock buybacks kill jobs in Michigan and Pennsylvania

UPS has 500,000 employees (360,000 of whom are members of the
Teamsters Union) and revenues of more than $90 billion. Nevertheless,
this wealthy company has announced it is laying off 206 workers in New
Stanton, Pennsylvania, and another 162 in Livonia, Michigan.

The current administration should demand that UPS and other large
corporations refrain from compulsory layoffs. Instead, large companies
looking to reduce head count should use voluntary layoffs, offering
sufficient funds so that workers are willing to leave. No one should
be forced out.

Biden could point out that UPS has plenty of money to fund voluntary
layoffs, given that in 2023 it put $3 billion
[[link removed].] into
stock buybacks. He could explain that those UPS stock repurchases
artificially raised the price of its shares, enriching its largest
stock owners, including big financial firms like Vanguard,
BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase
[[link removed]], and Charles Schwab.
He could make it clear that those Michigan and Pennsylvania layoffs
are helping to finance these stock buybacks.

This president could also play his biggest “trump” card: In 2022,
UPS, along with Federal Express and Polar Air Cargo, shared a $2.24
billion federal contract. Surely, UPS would understand if it were
pointed out that it’s a bad look to take government money with one
hand, and then do billions in stock buybacks with the other while also
laying off workers.

Greg Hayes, the CEO of United Technologies, Carrier’s parent
company, understood this potential threat from Trump very well. As he
put it
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“I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night. I also know that
10 percent of our revenue comes from the U.S. government.”

Each year, about $700 billion in federal contracts goes to
corporations, thousands of them. They should be told, _no more stock
buybacks, no more compulsory layoffs._

But won’t this cripple corporations? Not a chance. In Germany, the
union IG Metall convinced Siemens Energy not to shut down six
facilities and lay off 3,000 workers. Instead, the company agreed to
voluntary layoffs and to put other products in the six facilities that
were initially scheduled to close. No workers were forced out, and no
plants were shut down.

The point is that large corporations have enormous flexibility to
rearrange their production lines and services. Private equity
companies which own many different businesses can easily do the same
if they consider their workers as important as their shareholders.

Private Equity Kills Jobs in Menasha, Wisconsin

Atlas Holdings, founded in 2002, is a sprawling private equity firm
with fingers in many pies. It plucks out $11 billion annually from 
[[link removed]]26
different business lines, employing approximately 50,000 people in
industries ranging from aluminum processing, building materials,
construction services, food manufacturing, packaging, paper, power
generation…and on and on.

In 2020, Atlas Holdings acquired the assets of LSC Communications. It
then spun off LSC’s book production business as the Lakeside Book
Company. In June 2024, Lakeside will shut down its Menasha, Wisconsin,
facility putting 339 workers out of work.

Private equity companies like Atlas Holdings make a killing by cutting
costs. As _Forbes Magazine_
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perfectly clear, cutting costs means job loss: “All too often when
private equity professionals tout their cost cutting strategies, they
do not mention that cost cutting means firing people and taking away
their livelihoods.”

What could the Biden administration do? They could call out Atlas
Holdings publicly. It’s possible Atlas would not want too bright a
light to shine on its vast empire. Maybe they’ve taken on too much
debt, which has led to the demise of many companies acquired by
private equity companies. Or maybe, like Carrier, they’d greatly
prefer a state or federal subsidy to keep the Menasha facility open.

The bully pulpit of the presidency is powerful. Biden should use it
right now to send a powerful signal to these Wisconsin workers, and
workers everywhere, that his administration is willing to fight for
them.

Standing on a picket line, as Biden did with the UAW, is important.
Infrastructure bills that create new jobs in the coming years are even
more important. But most important of all is saving a job in the here
and now. That’s what a good economy means to the victims of mass
layoffs.

There ought to be a law.

Biden should also make clear that in his second term he will sign a
bill to dramatically curtail stock buybacks, a major cause of mass
layoffs and income inequality. In 1982, before stock buybacks were
deregulated, only two percent of corporate profits were used for stock
repurchase. Today, it’s nearly 70 percent.

He should also rename the 2017 Republican “Tax Cut and Jobs Act”
the “Stock Buyback Bonanza Bill.” By cutting the top corporate tax
rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, the 2017 tax cut would massively
stimulate investments in long-term growth, its supporters said.
Instead, corporate stock buybacks increased by 52.6 percent, while new
capital investment grew by only 8.8 percent, according to_ Forbes_
[[link removed]].
At least half of the entire tax cut flowed directly into the pockets
of wealthy investors, the primary beneficiaries of these stock
buybacks.

Biden should also demand that the Democratic platform this year call
for a dramatic reduction of stock buybacks. This would signal to
working people of all shades and colors that the Democrats are willing
to take on Wall Street to save jobs.

Then again, Wall Street won’t be happy.

Unfortunately, many Democrats still want it both ways, claiming that
economic growth is good for corporations _and_ workers, that more
jobs are being created than ever before at higher levels of pay, and
that’s a win-win for everyone.

But for the tens of thousands forced out of their jobs each month
during the current economic boom, the old union song’s challenge
probably rings truer:

“Which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on?”

_Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute
[[link removed]] and author of the new book,
“WALL STREET’S WAR ON WORKERS: HOW MASS LAYOFFS AND GREED ARE
DESTROYING THE WORKING CLASS AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT.
[[link removed]]"
(2024). Read more of his work on his substack here
[[link removed]]._

* President Biden; 2024 Election; Biden vs Trump;
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* working class voters
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