Like it or not, it’s political Groundhog Day. 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. 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 with 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 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 that 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.

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 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, 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, “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........

© Common Dreams