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united auto workers
'We Are Unafraid': In Face of Trump Win, Champions of Working Class Vow Epic Fight
"We must raise the standard of living for our members and the entire working class through unity, solidarity, and working-class power," said UAW president Shawn Fain. "No matter who is in the White House."
Nov 14, 2024
The results of last week's U.S. elections were cataclysmic for the Democratic Party, which lost control of the White House and Senate as the Republicans gained a trifecta, but economic justice advocates on Wednesday said that for many working people, the fight for a better standard of living and a political system that places people over Wall Street profits remains the same.
United Auto Workers (UAW) president Shawn Fain acknowledged in a letter to members that while the election outcome was not one that "our union advocated for, and it's not the outcome a majority of our members voted for, our mission remains the same."
"We must raise the standard of living for our members and the entire working class through unity, solidarity, and working-class power," said Fain. "No matter who is in the White House."
Noting that "in a democracy, the four most important words are: The People Have Spoken," Fain suggested that the Democratic Party did not convince a key constituency—working people, including an estimated 78% of Americans who live paycheck-to-paycheck—that it represents their interests, and as a result handed the presidential victory to President-elect Donald Trump.
While the UAW endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and Fain campaigned with her, he said, "for us, this was never about party or personality. As we have said consistently, both parties share blame for the one-sided class war that corporate America has waged on our union, and on working-class Americans for decades."
Trump ran an openly xenophobic campaign, but won the support of low-income voters from a range of ethnic backgrounds as he demonized undocumented immigrants and made outlandish, racist claims about Ohio residents from Haiti, sticking to his longtime narrative that immigration—not corporate greed—is to blame for the country's housing crisis, economic inequality, and stagnant wages.
"The task for the Democrats is what it should have been all along: remaking the party into the party of the bottom 90%... the party that rejects Elon Musk and the entire American oligarchy."
As numerous progressives have pointed out since the election, the Biden administration has introduced a host of pro-worker policies and Harris unveiled numerous economic justice proposals during her brief campaign—but her decision to campaign with billionaire businessman Mark Cuban and unveil a more Wall Street-friendly tax proposal have been criticized moves that highlighted the Democratic Party's close ties to rich donors and muddied her message to working families.
With the Democratic Party still taking part in the "one-sided class war" referenced by Fain, the UAW leader said that the union "stand[s] today where we stood last week."
"We stand for bringing back American jobs," said Fain. "We stand for taking on corporations that break their promises to American workers. And we stand against the same things we've always stood against. We will never support the destruction of the union movement. We will never support efforts to divide and conquer the working class by nationality, race, and gender. We will never support handouts to the ultra-wealthy or paying for it by cutting crucial federal investments."
"We are unafraid to confront any politician who takes actions that harm the working class, our communities, and our unions," he said.
Fain's comments came as progressive lawmakers including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) spoke at an event titled Delivering for the Working Class.
While the caucus is set to be in the minority in the House and Senate for at least the next two years, the senators used the event to rally Democratic leaders to "learn the right lessons" from Trump's victory.
As Democrats decide who they answer to, Warren asked, "Is it going to be a handful of billionaires? We know what kind of policy they want to set. Or are we going to show voters that Democrats are the ones who are willing to unrig this economy?"
Sanders suggested that Fain's rallying of the UAW's more than 400,000 members will also be a key to fighting Trump's agenda, including Republicans' plans to make cuts to Social Security and Medicare and his likely reversal of Biden's pro-worker policies.
"The antidote to enormous economic and political power on the part of the few is mass organizing at the grassroots level among working people—to stand up and fight for an economy that works for all," said Sanders.
Just after the election last week, Sanders became one of the first members of the Democratic caucus to release a statement on the party's major losses, driving home the same message he has repeated during his decades in public service: "It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them."
On MSNBC on Wednesday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the election results in several red states proved that many of Trump's supporters prioritized working class issues.
"Voters actually want the populist, popular ideas that we have been pushing at the Progressive Caucus, certainly, for quite some time," said Jayapal. "They went to the ballot in three states that voted for Donald Trump... and they voted for a higher minimum wage, they voted for paid sick leave."
Voters in Alaska and Missouri approved ballot measures requiring a higher minimum wage and demanding that employers provide paid sick leave; Nebraska voters also supported a measure allowing workers to earn paid sick leave.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on Thursday also took a close look at voting figures, writing at his Substack newsletter that the election didn't deliver "a very big mandate" to Trump as the president-elect claimed, or even "a 'red shift' to Trump and the Republicans."
"It was a blue abandonment," he wrote. "We now know that 9 million fewer votes were cast nationwide in 2024 than in 2020. Trump got about a million more votes than he did in 2020 (700,000 of them in the seven battleground states). That's no big deal... The biggest takeaway is that Biden's 9 million votes disappeared... So what happened to the 9 million?"
Reich posited that 9 million potential voters refused to vote for Trump, but also didn't turn out for the Democratic Party because they were left thinking, "They don't give a damn about me."
"The task for the Democrats is what it should have been all along: remaking the party into the party of the bottom 90%—the party of people who don't live off stocks and bonds, of people who are not CEOs or billionaires like Mark Cuban, the party that rejects Elon Musk and the entire American oligarchy," he wrote. "Instead, the Democratic Party must be the party of average working people whose wages have gone nowhere and whose jobs are less secure."
He continued:
Blue-collar private-sector workers earned more on average in 1972, after adjusting for inflation, than they are earning now in 2024. This means today's blue-collar workers are on average earning less in real dollars than their grandparents earned 52 years ago.
Yet the American economy is far larger than it was 52 years ago. Where did the additional money go? To the top. So what's the Democrats' task? To restructure the economy toward more widely shared prosperity.
In his statement on Wednesday, Fain said the lives and daily struggles of many working class voters are unchanged after the election.
"Today, our members clock in to the same jobs they clocked into last week," said Fain. "You face the same threats—corporate greed, Wall Street predators, and a political system that ignores us. And we are driven by the same force, as outlined in our UAW Constitution generations ago: 'The hope of the worker in advancing society toward the ultimate goal of social and economic justice.'"
Fain urged union members to get involved in "political action on every level of government, in every state, in every sector has an impact on every contract, every organizing drive, and every standard we win as a union," while Sanders implored the Democratic Party to urgently "determine which side it is on in the great economic struggle of our times."
"It needs to provide a clear vision as to what it stands for," wrote Sanders in a Boston Globe op-ed on Tuesday. "Either you stand with the powerful oligarchy of our country, or you stand with the working class. You can't represent both."
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Unions Say Building Worker Power Is Only Way to Defeat Trump's Fascist Right
"No one—not Donald Trump or JD Vance, nor any one CEO—can stop solidarity," said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler. "Organized labor is the path forward."
Nov 07, 2024
The largest labor unions in the United States are ready for a fight.
That much was made clear within hours of Donald Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in Tuesday's election, an outcome that will soon bring to power a former president who aggressively pursued anti-worker policies during his first four years in the White House despite posturing as an ally of rank-and-file union members.
For Shawn Fain, the fiery president of the United Auto Workers, the struggle for the nation's working class in the wake of Trump's victory is identical to the one it faced prior to the election: "unchecked corporate greed destroying our lives, our families, and our communities."
"It's the threat of companies like Stellantis, Mack Truck, and John Deere shipping jobs overseas to boost shareholder profits. It's the threat of corporate America telling the working class to sit down and shut up," said Fain, who led the UAW through a six-week strike last year that yielded historic contracts with the nation's three largest car manufacturers.
"We've said all along that no matter who is in the White House, our fight remains the same," Fain added. "The fight for a living wage, affordable healthcare, and time for our families continues. It's time for Washington, D.C. to put up or shut up, no matter the party, no matter the candidate. Will our government stand with the working class, or keep doing the bidding of the billionaires? That's the question we face today. And that's the question we'll face tomorrow. The answer lies with us. No matter who's in office."
"We've seen assaults on our fundamental rights before. In the days, months, and years ahead, labor's task will be to defend working people when it happens again."
While energized by recent victories, the U.S. labor movement is broadly in disrepair, battered by a decades-long corporate assault. Last year, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the country's union membership rate was just 10%, down from 20.1% in 1983.
And union members were hardly unified behind one candidate in Tuesday's election:
Exit polling shows that members of union households backed Harris by a relatively narrow margin of 53% to Trump's 45%.
But organized labor, weakened and divided as it is, still represents "the most promising and powerful tool to turn this all around," journalist Hamilton Nolan wrote for In These Times on Wednesday.
In a separate piece ahead of Tuesday's election, Nolan argued that "unions are inherently progressive."
"Not because they endorse a particular political party, but because the nature of the work they do is about empowering the working class and increasing equality and enabling regular people to stand up effectively to the power of capital, of the rich, of corporations, of unrestrained capitalism," he wrote. "When you win a union and sign a union contract it is not just an act of improving your own life and the lives of your coworkers; it is a battle won in the class war. And the political war that you are stressed about right now is, at its heart, a class war."
Claude Cummings, president of the Communications Workers of America, affirmed that message in a statement following Tuesday's election, saying that "corporate CEOs are intent on dividing us against each other so they can drive down wages and cut corners on safety to boost profits for big investors."
"Now it is time to reunite around our shared values," said Cummings. "No matter who is in office, our goals are always the same—to use our collective power to protect our rights, to improve our working conditions, and to give everyone an opportunity to have a union voice on the job."
Want to build worker power against the billionaires and corporate CEOs? Form a union. https://t.co/OfgO2NOTVk
— CWA (@CWAUnion) November 7, 2024
In the second Trump administration, unions are likely to face a billionaire-shaped government hostile to organized labor's rights and aspirations for a more just and equitable society.
While no final decisions have been made, The Washington Postreported earlier this month that Trump sees former fast-food executive Andrew Puzder—an enemy of unions and opponent of raising the minimum wage—as a top contender for the labor secretary post. Trump selected Puzder for the role in his first White House term, but Puzder withdrew his nomination in the face of bipartisan backlash.
The Post also reported that Trump intends to fire National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo—a champion of workers—on day one and "reverse wins for unions under Biden," including "a 2023 landmark ruling that forces employers found using illegal tactics to fight labor organizing to recognize unions." The NLRB ruling has provided a boost to unionization efforts.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said in a statement Wednesday that the Project 2025 agenda crafted by Trump allies and members of his first administration "promises to dismantle labor unions because we are a pillar of democracy and a check on power."
Acknowledging that Trump's win represents "a blow for every worker who depends on our elected leaders to fight for our jobs, our unions, and our contracts," Shuler said that "we stand for solidarity—the kind that is built when working people stand together to take on the biggest, richest bosses and the most powerful extremist politicians."
"Most importantly, we know how to fight back when anyone comes after our freedoms," said Shuler. "No one—not Donald Trump or JD Vance, nor any one CEO—can stop solidarity. Organized labor is the path forward."
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president April Verrett echoed that sentiment.
"We are putting corporations, billionaires, and extremist politicians on notice—we see you, we know just what you're trying to do, and we won’t back down. We know what it's like to face down bullies," Verrett added. "We will not allow anyone to take away our fundamental rights and freedoms. Hear us: when you attack just one of us, you're attacking every worker who makes our communities, our economy, and our nation strong."
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Sanders Slams 'Big Money Interests' and Consultants That Control Democratic Party After Loss to Trump
"While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change," said the Vermont Independent. "And they're right."
Nov 06, 2024
Shortly before Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her concession speech on Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders forcefully called out Democratic Party leadership for losing the White House and at least one chamber of Congress to Republicans.
"It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well."
"While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change," said the senator, who decisively won reelection on Tuesday as Republicans reclaimed the upper chamber. "And they're right."
After seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, Sanders spent this cycle campaigning for Harris, warning of Republican President-elect Donald Trump's return, blasting billionaire involvement in U.S. politics, and urging Democrats to better serve working people.
"Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? ...Probably not."
In Sanders' new statement, he highlighted U.S. income and wealth inequality, worker concerns about artificial intelligence, and the federal government's failure to provide paid leave and universal healthcare while pouring billions of dollars into Israel's war on the Gaza Strip.
"Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful oligarchy which has so much economic and political power?" he asked. "Probably not."
"In the coming weeks and months those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very serious political discussions," Sanders concluded. "Stay tuned."
Progressives—who have responded to Trump's Electoral College and popular vote win by criticizing billionaires who backed him and promising "unprecedented resistance" during his second term—echoed Sanders' remarks.
Sharing Sanders' statement on X—the social media platform owned by billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk—United Auto Workers (UAW) communications director Jonah Furman said: "The task has been clear for a decade. The question is only whether and when we will rise to the task."
Separately, the union's president, Shawn Fain, said in a Wednesday statement that "UAW members around the country clocked in today under the same threat they faced yesterday: unchecked corporate greed destroying our lives, our families, and our communities."
"We've said all along that no matter who is in the White House, our fight remains the same," Fain continued, pointing to the battle against "broken trade laws" like the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement and fights for good union jobs, a secure retirement for everyone, a living wage, affordable healthcare, and time for families.
"It's time for Washington, D.C. to put up or shut up, no matter the party, no matter the candidate," added Fain, whose union endorsed Harris. "Will our government stand with the working class, or keep doing the bidding of the billionaires? That's the question we face today. And that's the question we'll face tomorrow. The answer lies with us. No matter who's in office."
"Will our government stand with the working class, or keep doing the bidding of the billionaires?"
In a post-election column, Chuck Idelson, former communications senior strategist for National Nurses United, made the case that "amid the postmortems and reckoning that will now follow the wreckage of Donald Trump's return to 'absolute' power, as authorized by the Supreme Court, there are... two notes in particular that deserve a deeper dive."
"In Missouri, a state Trump won by 58%, voters also acted to increase the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour and to require employers to provide paid sick leave to workers," he pointed out. "In Nebraska, another red state won by Trump, voters also passed a paid sick leave measure, Initiative 436, by 75%."
In addition to the ballot measures, Idelson highlighted that "in the multitude of exit poll results, one particularly stands out—94% of registered Republicans voted for Trump, the exact same percentage he received in 2020. The heavy campaign focus on pulling away Republican voters from Trump turned out to be a pipe dream. The old cliché 'it's the economy stupid,' triumphed again."
Harris' campaign, he argued, "reflected the direction the Democratic Party establishment has taken, away from working-class issues since the advent of neoliberal policies in the 1970s and carried out by most Democratic Party presidents since."
Historian Harvey J. Kaye, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, took aim at the Democratic Party on social media Wednesday, noting failures to stand up to billionaires, raise the minimum wage, and pass the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.
Morris Pearl, chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and a former managing director at BlackRock, said in a Wednesday statement that "a self-avowed authoritarian successfully wielded the economic frustrations of millions to win the most consequential election of our nation's history. The Democratic establishment has only itself to blame."
"Voters demanded a fundamental overhaul of a rigged economic system. When neoliberal Democrats dithered, Donald Trump offered to clear the board, and voters chose the dark unknown rather than the status quo," Pearl added. "The only question remaining is, why are Democrats surprised? This is the entirely predictable result of a multidecade strategy to appease the rich that met no serious resistance."
The Sunrise Movement—a youth-led climate group that worked to reach millions of young voters in swing states to defeat Trump—similarly stressed on social media Wednesday that "last night's results were a call for change. Millions of people are fed up after living through decades of a rigged economy and corrupt political system. They are looking for someone to blame. It's critical the Dem Party takes that seriously."
"For decades, Democrats have prioritized corporations over people. This is the result. Every working American feels the crisis. We can't pay rent. Our government can't pass basic legislation. The WEATHER has turned against us. And Dems look us in the eye and say it's fine," the group continued. "Trump loves corporations even more than Democrats do, but he ran an anti-establishment campaign that gave an answer to people's desire for change."
"We can stop him, and we must," Sunrise said of Trump. "But it's going to take many thousands of people taking to the streets and preparing to strike. And it's going to take mass movements putting out a better vision for our country than Trumpism and proving that we can make it happen."
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