UPDATED: 27 SEP 2023 12:43 PM EST
The autoworkers' union leader blasted Donald Trump on CNN Tuesday night, foreshadowing a chilly reception ahead of the former president's planned visit to Michigan Wednesday.
“I don’t think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for,” United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, adding that he will not meet with Trump while he's in town. “He serves the billionaire class and that’s what’s wrong with this country.”
Trump will skip the second Republican primary debate in California Wednesday night, opting instead to speak with current and former members of the autoworkers’ union on the 13th day of their strike. Workers began striking after their four-year contracts expired and the three major automakers — General Motors, Stellantis and Ford — did not meet the union's demands.
The event will be held at a non-unionized auto parts supplier located near Detroit. Fain called it a “pathetic irony” that the former president chose a non-union venue to host a rally for union members, slamming Trump’s record on labor.
“In 2008 during the Great Recession, he blamed UAW members. … In 2015, when he was running for president, he talked about doing a rotation, taking all these good-paying jobs in the Midwest and moving them somewhere in the South, where people will work for less money and then to make people beg for their jobs back at lower wages,” Fain said.
Fain added that Trump had been “missing in action” during his presidency.
“And then the ultimate show of how much he cares about our workers was in 2019. ... Where was he then? Our workers at [General Motors] were on strike for 60 days, for two months, they were out there on the picket lines,” Fain said.
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign defended his record in a statement to POLITICO, claiming the former president had "always been on the side of American workers."
"There’s a disconnect between the political leadership of some of the labor unions and the working middle class employees that they purport to represent," spokesperson Steven Cheung wrote in the statement.
Fain praised President Joe Biden for visiting the UAW picket line on Tuesday, where he spoke alongside the president in Wayne County, Mich.
Fain called Biden’s visit a “great thing” for the union, noting that it was the first time a sitting president had joined a picket line. “That cannot be minimized, it can’t go unnoticed,” Fain said.
Despite Fain’s appreciation for Biden’s visit, the UAW has not yet endorsed a presidential candidate.
“Today was really about our workers,” Fain told Blitzer, and said endorsements would come at the “appropriate time.”
