Former Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta downplayed the threat of an auto workers strike during an interview with Newsmax on Monday, saying that "strikes are often threatened and rarely do happen."
The United Auto Workers Union is pressuring some of the largest carmakers in the U.S. to acquiesce to its demands, which include a 46% pay raise and a 32-hour work week that includes 40 hours of pay.
When asked about the threat of a strike, Acosta told "National Report" that "At the end of the day these strikes are often threatened and rarely do happen … we've seen that with prior UAW strikes. We saw that with the UPS-Teamsters negotiations this summer."
He added: "What I think is most meaningful here, however, is what they're asking for. They're asking for a 46% wage increase and they're asking to be paid 40 hours a week, but only work 32 hours, and that short a work week we're seeing more and more often, and that's not what America is about."
Acosta went on to say that part of the reason that workers in many industries are calling for strikes is "workers are seeing a lot of Americans that are working from home and they're being asked to go back into the office and … workers are saying we don't want to go back into the office."
He continued, "Is America going to be a country of two classes of workers: ones who work from home and ones who actually have to go in and work in the office?"
Acosta said, "To some extent, you're seeing more and more individuals that cannot work from home saying, we want to be home more often."
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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