Donald Trump is trashing United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain after the union leader announced his organization’s endorsement of Joe Biden’s bid for reelection.
Fain “is a real ‘STIFF’ who is selling the Automobile Industry right into the big, powerful, hands of China,” Trump wrote Sunday night on Truth Social.
“He bought into Biden’s ‘vision’ of all Electric Vehicles, which require far fewer workers to make each car but, more importantly, are not wanted in large numbers by the consumer, and will ALL be made in China … Get rid of this dope & vote for DJT. I will bring the Automobile Industry back to our Country,” he added.
In a scathing speech last week, Fain blasted Trump as a “scab” who if ever “worked in an auto plant, he wouldn’t be a UAW member, he’d be a company man trying to squeeze the American worker.”
“We’ve said we’d stand with whoever stood with us in our fight,” Fain said. “Not because somebody was nice to us … Joe Biden bet on the American worker, while Donald Trump blamed the American worker … So if our endorsements must be earned, Joe Biden has earned it.”
In September of last year, the UAW led a strike against the nation’s “Big Three” unionized auto manufacturers: Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. The decision marked the first time in the UAW’s history that the union had called a strike against all three companies at once. The UAW, led by Fain, demanded changes to pay structure, the expansion of negotiated labor contracts to planned electric vehicle factories, and the revival of benefit programs that were revoked in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
Trump attempted to capitalize on the strike by holding an event in Michigan at a non-union parts manufacturer, where he told the gathered crowd that union “leadership should endorse me and I will not say a bad thing about them again.”
By contrast, Biden made history later that month by becoming the first president to join a union picket line at a demonstration in Wayne, Michigan, the site of two major Ford manufacturing plants.
Source link: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-trashes-shawn-fain-losing-uaw-endorsement-1234955812/