The UAW endorsed Biden — and panned Republican frontrunner Trump as a 'scab'
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President Biden is greeted by Shawn Fain, President of the United Auto Workers. The union endorsed Biden's reelection bid on Wednesday.Alex Brandon / AP -
President Biden was the first sitting president in modern history to walk a picket line with striking workers.Evan Vucci / Associated Press
The United Auto Workers endorsed President Biden's reelection campaign on Wednesday in a fiery speech from its president, Shawn Fain. Fain said Biden had earned the nod with his pro-union policies and went on to excoriate former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner in the Republican race, for his past actions and statements.
Fain showed a highlight reel of Biden walking the picket line outside a General Motors facility in Wayne, Mich., the first time in modern history that a sitting president had done that.
He contrasted Biden's actions with what Trump did during a 40-day strike in 2019, displaying a blank slide to the ballroom of cheering union members. "He said nothing, he did nothing, not a damn thing, because he doesn't care about the American worker," Fain said.
"Donald Trump is a scab," Fain said. "Donald Trump stands against everything we stand for as a union, as a society."
"So that's a choice we face. It's not about who you like, it's not about your party. It's not this bulls*** about age. It's not about anything but our best shot at taking back power for the working class," he said.
Last year's strike was a tipping point
In the 2016 election, Trump won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, in part with a message to workers hurt by free trade agreements.
But Biden won those key states in 2020, in part because he made gains among white working class voters — and won a majority of union households. It's a strategy his campaign is seeking to repeat this year, which makes the UAW endorsement key.
While other major U.S. unions were quick to endorse his campaign last year, the UAW — which represents nearly 400,000 members — held back. Fain said that the union's endorsements were "going to be earned and not freely given."
Then came the UAW's six-week strike last year with the Big Three automakers, and Biden's full-throated support for the union.
"I was so damn proud to stand on that picket line with you," Biden said on Wednesday. "You made sure the automobile future of the world will be made in America."
Fain also reminded members how Biden supported a UAW push to save a plant in Belvidere, Ill. "Instead of talking trash about our union, Joe Biden stood with us, and supported our historic victory to save Belvidere, and save that community," Fain said, recalling how Trump in 2008 had blamed unions for the crisis in the auto industry.
Aside from a brief protest from a few audience members who disrupted Biden's speech to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, the crowd seemed to largely back the union's endorsement of Biden.
"I think he's the best we have to represent our interests and the working class's interests," said Bob Reynolds, a retiree from Ford's Buffalo Stamping Plant.
While he's concerned about climate change, Reynolds said he is concerned about the speed of the transition to electric vehicles, which the Biden administration has made a top priority. Still, he's optimistic that the cars of the future will be built by UAW workers.
"We're organizing more and more. The union jobs are there if we can organize them," he said.
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Transcript
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The hot labor summer of 2023 may have yielded big contracts for workers, but a labor resurgence? - not exactly. The share of U.S. workers who belong to unions remains at an all-time low. That's according to new numbers from the Labor Department. NPR's Andrea Hsu reports.
ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: Union membership was once commonplace in America. In the 1950s, about a third of private sector workers belonged to unions. Today, it's just 6%. And even as union jobs are growing, nonunion jobs are growing faster. Companies have been fighting back against labor for decades. The reality - it's really difficult for workers to organize. And so Heidi Shierholz says...
HEIDI SHIERHOLZ: There's just a massive gap between the share of workers who are in unions and the share of workers who report that they want to be in a union.
HSU: Shierholz is president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. She says a big part of the problem is labor law. It's weak. Even when a company is found to have violated workers' rights by, say, firing employees for leading a union drive, the consequence under labor law...
SHIERHOLZ: Basically, a slap on the wrist.
HSU: The stalled union campaign at Amazon is one testament to this. Shierholz believes there need to be some major changes to labor law to really halt and reverse the decline that unions have seen over the decades. And efforts in Congress to do that have so far failed. Now, where unions do seem to be winning is in the arena of public opinion. According to Gallup polling last summer, more than 70% of Americans sided with Hollywood writers and autoworkers over their employers in those labor disputes.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Got to go. Hey hey, ho ho, corporate greed has got to go. Hey hey...
HSU: Americans' support for labor unions is as high today as it was in the 1960s, and young people are especially enthusiastic. Last year, unions added 139,000 members, that growth driven entirely by workers under 45. Shierholz says that's promising.
SHIERHOLZ: I think that does point to a shift that may be a more lasting shift in interest and popularity of unions.
HSU: Still, Gallup found there are limits to that interest. Six in 10 people surveyed said they were not interested at all in joining a union - another reason a labor renaissance may not be coming soon.
Andrea Hsu, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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