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CNH plans to move some Wisconsin jobs to Mexico by 2027

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Workers split between Biden and Trump, union endorses

Biden

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Recent layoffs and outsourcing plans dampen enthusiasm for

both

candidates

By Timothy Aeppel

RACINE, Wisconsin, July 15 (Reuters) - For workers at

CNH Industrial's ( CNH ) sprawling tractor plant just outside Racine,

Wisconsin, debate over whether President Joe Biden or former

President Donald Trump would do more to save their jobs from

getting packed off to Mexico has turned into "friendly warfare."

CNH, a multinational heavy-vehicle maker based in the

UK, has cut nearly one-third of the plant's hourly jobs and told

the union it wants to move many of the remaining jobs south of

the border by 2027.

The United Auto Workers union endorsed Biden in January and its

leaders point to his willingness to join workers on the picket

line during a 2023 auto strike - a first for a sitting president

- as evidence that Biden is more likely to favor union workers

in fights like this. The UAW's national leaders met last week to

discuss their concerns about Biden's ability to beat Trump, in

the aftermath of the president's poor debate performance last

month.

Meanwhile, rank-and-file UAW members at CNH and elsewhere remain

split over who to support, and CNH workers interviewed by

Reuters in Racine said the rift is causing friction as the

election approaches. The city of 76,500 people is 30 miles (48

km) south of Milwaukee, where Republicans gather this week to

formally anoint Trump as their nominee, days after the former

president survived an assassination attempt.

"I believe Trump wants to keep manufacturing in the U.S. - and

he'll bring a lot of it back, like he did the last time," said

Cynthia Schlapkohl, a cheerful 69-year-old who builds mufflers

and has worked for the company for 14 years.

Schlapkohl describes the back-and-forth over politics inside the

plant as "friendly warfare," though for some workers it clearly

has an edge. For a while, she would place, in playful mockery,

"I did that" stickers featuring Biden's face on lunch boxes of

Democratic colleagues who she calls the "diehard union guys."

Republicans across the U.S. had placed the stickers on gas pumps

when inflation was at its highest.

'EVEN SPLIT'

Local union leaders don't track members' party affiliations

or voting preferences, but they closely follow chatter on the

factory floor. "In our facility, I'd say it's an even split"

between Biden and Trump, said Richard Glowacki, who heads UAW

Local 180's bargaining committee.

Glowacki said he doesn't urge colleagues to vote for a

candidate based on who might save their jobs, since no president

has such power. "Presidents don't dictate what companies do -

except in wartime," he said.

Both Biden now and Trump during his four years as president

focused on reviving a dwindling U.S. industrial base. In

Wisconsin, where manufacturing's 16% share of overall employment

is roughly twice the national average, that matters.

During Trump's first three years in office, factory employment

in Wisconsin grew by around 3.7%, but was already falling off

when the pandemic struck in early 2020 and wiped out roughly

40,000 manufacturing jobs. Four years later, the total number of

Wisconsin factory jobs has recovered to about 482,000, according

to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly where it was before

the pandemic.

Union workers, who hold 10% of all payroll jobs nationally and

7.4% in Wisconsin, have long held diverse political views but

were mostly considered dependable Democrats.

Not anymore. The fight for blue-collar America has jumbled the

political calculus in swing states such as Wisconsin where

old-line industrial unions remain a powerful, albeit diminished,

force.

Trump and his populist strain of protectionist policies such

as tariffs on Chinese goods accelerated a drift toward

Republicans by unionized workers. A question in this year's race

is whether unions such as the UAW can reverse this migration.

"Joe Biden is the most pro-union president in American

history, the first president to walk a picket line, the defender

of more than 1 million pensions, and a champion for working

people over greedy corporations," a Biden campaign spokesperson

said.

A campaign spokesperson meanwhile said Trump has made

"historic gains with longtime Democrat constituencies including

African Americans, young people and union workers."

NO MORE 'LITTLE MOSCOW'

A visit to Racine - one of the birthplaces of the American

farm machinery industry - underscores how tough it will be for

Democrats to regain their dominance with industrial union

workers.

The city was once dotted with factories and solidly

Democratic. In the 1930s, it elected a socialist mayor.

"They called us Little Moscow," said Gerald Karwowski, a

retired CNH worker who developed a second career as a local

historian.

Jerome I. Case started building threshing machines here 182

years ago and his portrait still hangs in the city council

chamber. In the 1970s, the company employed over 3,500 people in

five factories around Racine.

But as it went through a succession of new owners - Case is

the "C" in CNH - and downsizing, Racine's devotion to unions and

Democrats waned.

Racine County voters favored Trump in 2020, 51% to 47%,

continuing their drift to Republicans. In 2016, Trump received

48.1% to Hillary Clinton's 43.9%, while in 2012, Democrat Barack

Obama beat Republican Mitt Romney, 50.8% to 47.3%.

It was once easier for unions to influence how their

members voted, because unions played a bigger role in their

social lives, said Katherine Cramer, a political scientist at

the University of Wisconsin.

"But that's a thing of the past in Wisconsin, as elsewhere,"

she said.

'WE'RE SCREWED'

Gathered around a table inside their union hall last month

prior to the attempt on Trump's life, a group of workers agreed

politics had become a more visible, and sometimes toxic, topic

at work.

Josef Eisenbraun, a 44-year-old with tattoos covering both

biceps who builds axles, said the most ardent Trump supporters

irritate him.

"I call them the hoot-and-hollerers, because they're always

hooting and hollering about this or that," he said.

Eisenbraun voted for Biden in 2020 and will probably do so

again in November, but he's far from enthusiastic.

"Biden is a bumbling fool - Trump is just a fool," he said.

"That's why this election is really hard - vote for the guy

falling over literally on stage or the one who divides the

country."

Thomas Kloften, a 53-year-old press operator, is firmly for

Biden, but said he doesn't try to sway coworkers to his view.

"It comes up in weird, indirect ways - like when someone you

never talk to suddenly blurts, 'Whoever wins will have to spend

four years cleaning up Biden's mess,'" he said.

Abel Rodriguez, a 46-year-old computer-controlled machine

operator, said he thinks the CNH job losses in Racine have

dampened enthusiasm for either candidate as workers obsess about

the fate of their own jobs.

CNH recently shed about 200 of the plant's 660 union workers,

according to the union, and has told the UAW that plans for

outsourcing and moving jobs to Mexico will bring the number of

Racine union positions down to 175 by 2027, saving $58 million a

year. The actions followed a nine-month strike that ended in

January 2023.

The turmoil has attracted support from Democratic

politicians, including U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin,

who sent an open letter to CNH criticizing the moves.

The chair of the Racine County Republican Party, Andrew Docksey,

told Reuters he was unaware of layoffs at the plant.

In a statement, CNH acknowledged it cut an unspecified

number of jobs at the factory due to weak sales and that it

plans to "redistribute certain manufacturing activities" to

other CNH plants as well as third parties. This will allow

Racine to focus on tractor production, the company said.

"After the strike, I think everyone realized it doesn't

matter how we vote (in the upcoming election) - we're screwed,"

said Rodriguez, the machine operator. As for his own vote, he's

libertarian and said he usually picks a third-party candidate.