The United Auto Workers supported President Biden’s reelection this past week. In addition to walking picket lines and encouraging workers to organize, Biden has actively supported unions through direct policy actions such as appointing labor supporters to the National Labor Relations Board and indirectly by encouraging a high-pressure labor market that has pushed up wages and an expanded safety net.
Donald Trump, Biden’s opponent, loaded the NLRB with opponents of labor unions, devoted his administration to an oligarchic agenda, and attempted—though unsuccessfully—to reduce taxes for the wealthy, the social safety net, and eliminate democracy.
In light of everything mentioned above, it appears that the UAW chose to endorse rather easily. Nonetheless, it has elicited heated opposition. In a complaint to the left-wing publication The Intercept, Johannah King-Slutzky, a graduate student at Columbia University studying comparative and English literature, expressed her strong anti-Israel views: “A president who supports genocide and is actively sending funds and weapons to Israel to kill children, families, that’s not something that I feel has earned my endorsement.”
UAW member Aparna Gopalan, a graduate student studying anthropology at Harvard, criticized the endorsement in a harsh piece for the left-wing journal Jewish Currents. Why so many UAW members attend prestigious universities as graduate students may baffle you. The UAW organized graduate students, who currently make up over 25% of its membership, is the explanation.
Graduate students also have tangible interests, but they approach pursuing those interests—let’s say—in a more abstract and wide way. According to Gopalan’s piece, the UAW made a mistake by limiting its stance to issues that support Biden over Trump, such as labor law, economic policy, and the social safety net. She contends that “in their most visionary iterations, U.S. unions have repeatedly reached for this capacious understanding of their role, insisting that everything—even foreign policy—is a ‘bread-and-butter issue in a globally integrated system of accumulation.” That the UAW’s graduate-student wing has a more visionary sense of its goal than do auto factory workers may not come as a surprise.
Adithya Gungi, a graduate student at Columbia and fellow UAW member, is quoted in Gopalan’s piece as saying, “Donald Trump needs to be opposed.” However, this does not imply that a Democratic president who has been actively backing a tragic genocide in Palestine is fully supported.
That’s precisely what it means, actually. Allow me to explain an aspect of the American political system that is quite relevant, even if it may not have been covered in Ph.D. programs at Harvard and Columbia. Without a parliamentary-style system that permits smaller parties to amass delegates, one of the two major parties will prevail in a political system where two parties fight for a series of winner-take-all state races.
Given that Donald Trump is the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination, two things could happen: Trump or Biden will prevail in the election. By definition, everything that lessens Biden’s chances of winning—for example, refusing him the UAW support in a purple state that is a must-win for autoworkers—raises the probability that Trump will prevail.
I can definitely see why ardent opponents of Israel would be hesitant to back Biden, who has traditionally adopted a pro-Israel stance (even as he works to impose a cease-fire). The problem lies in the fact that Trump, his opponent, has far less empathy for the plight of Palestinians than Biden does. Apart from endorsing the Israeli right in its entirety, he has also stated that he “would support expelling Democratic representatives Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) from Congress for voting against a resolution condemning Hamas.” Therefore, even for an anti-Israel voter with a single objection, backing Trump is a highly odd stance.
Regardless, the United Auto Workers have chosen to back the pro-union candidate who not only opposes prejudice toward Muslims and Arabs but also supports Israel, rather than the anti-union candidate who regards Muslims and Arabs as if they are not deserving of respect and cannot ever truly become Americans. The reasoning seems obvious, but maybe I’m simply exposing the fact that I don’t have a graduate degree.