President Joe Biden likes to call himself the most pro-union president in American history. The United Auto Workers decision to strike against all the Big Three automakers for the first time ever is giving him the chance to fulfill his lofty rhetoric.

Since taking office, Biden cast his domestic economic agenda as a repudiation of the free-market economic policies that have dominated since President Ronald Reagan won election in 1980. Reaganomics, with its trickle-down upper-income tax cuts, corporate deregulation and anti-labor actions, failed the middle class, it failed America, Biden said in a June speech . More than any other single event, how Biden handles the UAW strike could determine the political and policy success of his grand agenda.

One of the defining moments of Reagans presidency and the economic world he created came in August 1981, after the nations air traffic controllers went on strike which was technically illegal under their contract he fired all 11,345 of them and dissolved their union.

Reagans action not only crushed the public sector union, it sent a message that the hand of government would press down on the scale on the side of management, not labor. It was a hinge point in American history that served a symbolic purpose: In a sense, the 60s ended in August 1981, conservative columnist George Will wrote .

That strike defined what the Reagan presidency would be about, said Joseph McCartin, a labor historian at Georgetown University and author of Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike That Changed America.

Now, Biden has the chance with the UAW strike to act in an equal and opposite manner to Reagan. Instead of siding with management, he can side with the workers and pressure the Big Three automakers General Motors, Ford and Stellantis to meet their demands. Such an act would give force to his rhetoric and provide the same kind of symbolic force for workers that Reagans act in 1981 served for employers.