Why union rank and file resists Bush's overtures

As ZZ Top plays on the jukebox, Bill Riley shoots pool with a friend near a UAW flag that hangs on the wall. Riley has worked at the Daimler truck plant for eight years, and says the president has done a fine job, up to now.

"I have no complaints. But I wonder if it's the calm before the storm," Mr. Riley says, pausing between shots. "I don't see that he's pro-union, that's my beef. Honestly? I care about me and my family. As long as we're taken care of, I'm fine."

Riley says he'd love to see Bush reach out to unions, but he needs to see real action, not just words. He, along with several other patrons, worries that the North American Free Trade Agreement will be expanded.

Sitting nearby, a 17-year veteran of the truck plant who gives his name only as Paul, says Bush doesn't bother him either. "I'm working and I'm doing OK." He doesn't blame the president for the economic slowdown.

Still, he says he didn't vote for Bush and probably wouldn't, because "I just don't like him. It's a personal thing. I don't like the way he rode his daddy's coattails." He admits, however, that might be willing to take a fresh look at Bush in 2004 provided he hasn't "screwed everything up."

While it is true that three years is a lifetime in politics, Bush's effort to woo unions is likely to be more complicated than meeting with labor leaders and speaking to union groups. What goes into an individual vote is no more simple here than anywhere else.

"Unions are far from monolithic," says David Rohde, a political scientist at Michigan State University. "Gore won 59 percent of union households in November, but remember Bush won 37."

Even with Macomb's heavy union presence, Bush did better here than in the state as a whole. He lost Michigan by 5 percent, but Macomb by 2.5 percent. And Reagan's victories in the county in 1980 and 1984 came even as unions endorsed his rivals and mobilized against him.

Still, Bush won't find it easy to increase his tally. Many analysts have said that his decision on stem cells would help pacify Catholic voters, Mr. Rohde says it will likely help him little in Macomb. "Bush got a chunk of conservative Catholic voters in the election and that decision means he still has them, but it hasn't helped him expand the vote."

Joe Siwick, heading home from his shift at the stamping plant, gladly stops when offered the chance to talk about the president. The stem cell decision didn't impress him much. "I'm a Christian, and being a Christian I think all life is precious, but that stem-cell decision was all political. Besides, being a Christian I also think you have an obligation to help the poor, and his tax cut is giving all the rich a big break and the poor are getting nothing."

But is he open to possibly voting for the president? "No," he says with finality, "and neither are many of the people I know."

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