UAW strike workers want Trump to stay out of talks with GM

FLINT, Mich. – Some United Auto Workers members walking on picket lines in front of General Motors factories in Michigan would like President Donald Trump to stay out of negotiations with the automaker.

"He did not support us when we went bankrupt, I do not think it will be something that the UAW will ever forget," said Adriane Hall, a 12-year-old UAW member picketing Monday in front of the automaker's truck manufacturing plant in Flint, Michigan. . "He did not support us then, why should he say something now?"

Hall was one of about 48,000 unionized GM employees who had gone on strike Sunday morning at midnight after the breakup of the contract talks between the company and the union over the weekend.

"Here we are again with General Motors and United Auto Workers," Trump tweeted after union leaders called for a strike on Sunday. "Gather up and make a deal!"

At the end of 2008, Trump supported the government in helping the auto sector: "You have to save the auto industry in this country, General Motors can be great, Ford can be great, and Chrysler could be great," he said. he told CNBC at the time.

However, once Trump became Republican presidential candidate, he also voiced support for the auto industry's bankruptcy.

"You could have let it go bankrupt, frankly, and rebuild it itself, and a lot of people thought it should happen," Trump said during an election appearance in the Michigan campaign in 2015. "Or you could have done it as it was before, I could have done it anyway, either way would have been acceptable, I think you would have been in the same place. "

Despite Trump's victory in the presidency as a "blue-collar billionaire," Dekiea Rawls, a 12-year-old UAW worker who works at Flint, said Trump should let the union negotiate its own contracts.

"To quickly or hurry to get an agreement, I do not think he cares too much about unionized workers," Rawls said.

Judy Batterbee, a member of the UAW for 22 years, has agreed. "I do not think it's necessary," she said, standing up, holding a UAW strike sign in her hand outside Flint's facility.

Brian Pannebecker, a UAW member for 23 years and more than 30 years of experience in the automotive industry, said he fully supported Trump 's public opinion during the negotiations.

"I have no problem with his intervention," said CNBC's Pannebecker, a Ford employee, during a phone interview. "Nothing controversial about it, he wants unions and management to sit down and make an agreement."

Pannebecker, organizer of a social media group called "Autoworkers for Trump 2020", believes that if Trump involved more in the negotiations, they would find a better solution faster.

"He wants us to get a good deal and he wants GM to keep his factories in the US," he said. "He is a hero for most auto workers, and I am all for his weighting, God bless him."

A spokesman for the UAW declined Sunday to comment on the president's tweet. A spokesman for GM said "We could not agree more" about the tweet.

This is the second time that Trump has been involved in the negotiations. In March, the US president urged both parties to begin negotiations "now" rather than waiting for the union's contract to end.

"General Motors and UAW will start" talks "in September / October," he tweeted on March 18. "Why wait, start now! I want jobs to stay in the United States and I want Lordstown (Ohio), in one of the best economies in our history, open or sold to a company that will open it quickly!"