The leader of the United Auto Workers (UAW) made a last plea to union members to vote for Kamala Harris on Tuesday night casting the presidential election as a fight between the interests of the working class and billionaires.
“I want you to know where your union stands. I want you to listen to how your UAW leadership thinks about this election and I want you to keep an open mind,” said Shawn Fain, president of the 391,00-strong union.
“I know that so much of our political system in this country is focused on bullshit, the back and forth, the name-calling, the focus on things that don’t affect our day-to-day lives as working-class people.”
Fain said the union had a responsibility to get involved in political activity, quoting the late UAW president Walter Reuther that “there’s a direct relationship between the ballot box and the bread box and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls”.
Fain characterized the past 40 years in the US as a one-sided class war on the working class that the billionaire class has been winning, citing the decimation of labor unions in the 1980s, the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) in the 1990s, the concessions made by the working class in the wake of the 2008 recession, and what he referred to as the “new Gilded Age” in the 2010s.
“We’re in a vicious cycle where the billionaire and corporate class take more and more for themselves and rewrite the rules of the game to keep it that way,” added Fain, who placed the Democratic party and Republican party on two opposing sides of this class war. “The Democratic party is interested in working-class people and what they have to say and they want to be in our coalition. On the other side, we have the Republicans who, on a national level in particular, have embraced the billionaire class. They embraced their billionaire candidate.”
The union formally endorsed Harris in August 2024. Fain spoke at the Democratic national convention and has been a vocal critic of Trump throughout the election. The majority of his members are in the crucial swing state of Michigan, home to the US auto industry.
Earlier this month, Fain criticized Trump over comments he made disparaging autoworkers in which he claimed “you could have a child do it”, in characterizing the work auto workers do in the US, and has frequently called Trump a “scab” in reference to Trump’s record on labor rights and support for employers over workers during strikes.
In the livestreamed speech to union members, Fain asserted the stark differences on labor issues and on policies affecting auto workers, between Trump and Harris.
According to the union, a majority of its members are supporting Harris over Trump.
“You can disagree with me and you can vote however you’re going to vote,” Fain continued. “But you cannot ignore our duty as a union to fight like hell for social and economic justice for every single member of this union and every single member of the working class.”
A poll conducted by the union in October 2024 found UAW members favor Harris over Trump by 22 percentage points, with 57% of members supporting Harris and 32% of members supporting Trump. The poll was conducted among union members in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.
Members who reported hearing from the union about the election support Harris over Trump by 29 percentage points. The poll noted the union engaged with 293,000 active and retired UAW members and their families.
In Michigan, the poll found UAW members support Harris over Trump by 20 percentage points.
“We can’t sit this one out,” concluded Fain. “Every organizing campaign, every contract, every grievance settlement will be impacted by this election. If the billionaires take back our presidency through their lap dog, that lap dog Donald Trump, you can be damn sure that every single CEO in this country will smell blood in the water.”
