UAW's Shawn Fain at the DNC: 'I'm not going to be shy' about going after Trump

CHICAGO — UAW President Shawn Fain has become a central fixture of the 2024 presidential race, a key surrogate for Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, and a verbal sparring partner of Republican former President Donald Trump's, who Fain labeled a "liar" and a "scab" at this week's Democratic National Convention.

For the record, he has no intention of stopping.

"He's a scab and we're going to call him out for what he is and continue to do it," Fain told a group of reporters in an informal sit-down this week after his Monday night speech to the convention. "And I think it's imperative we do it. We need to expose him for the fraud that he is and speak truth to that. And so long as he's a candidate, I'm not going to be shy about it. I'm not going to be quiet about it. I feel that's my obligation to working class people in our membership."

That membership — with some 400,000 active members and hundreds of thousands more retirees — is of no small consequence in this year's election or other recent ones. In 2016, It was widely believed that Trump, saying he would bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., did better than most other recent Republican presidential nominees among union households, especially in the Upper Midwest, though some studies have suggested the effect of that support was overrated. What is clear is that nationally and in the key industrial Midwest states where unions like the UAW are particularly strong, including the swing battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, President Joe Biden, on a strong union message, outperformed Trump among union households in 2020, relative to 2016.

The question is whether Fain, while throwing his enthusiastic support behind Harris — and showering his unmitigated contempt on Trump — can deliver. But he thinks he can.

Not least as a reason, he said, is Harris herself, who the union endorsed after she secured the support of enough delegates to become the Democratic nominee when Biden stepped aside as nominee last month. Crediting Biden as the first president to ever walk a picket line when he joined striking UAW workers outside an auto plant in Michigan last September, Fain ? a strapping worker, with short hair, wire-rimmed glasses and a bellowing tone he employs when he feels called upon to use it — said Harris stood "shoulder to shoulder" with workers when she walked the line with the union during a 40-day strike in 2019, when she was still a U.S. senator from California.

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She also leaned into taking a vice presidential nominee who the union wanted, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former teacher and a union member himself.

But most of all, Fain said, while not taking anything away from Biden, is Harris' support for stronger union protections combined with the energy and the enthusiasm she has generated on the campaign trail. "I'll give you a prime example," he said. "We had a rally in Detroit with Joe Biden a little over a month ago and there was 2, 3,000 people there. There was roughly 15,000 people a few weeks ago for Kamala Harris."

"It's a new day, it's new energy," he said.

Fain said that energy, along with outreach efforts by the UAW and other unions, is having an effect. Trump, for one, went so far as to falsely claim Harris' Detroit crowd was manufactured in photos by artificial intelligence, after dwelling on the smaller sizes of Biden's crowds compared to those for Harris, who has become the first Black woman and first South Asian-American woman to become a major party's nominee for president. Trump also has denied Harris' jump in the polls.

Most other labor unions have also come out for Harris as well: This week, the leaders of the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Service Employees International Union all spoke briefly, before Fain, on the convention mainstage.

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One that hasn't appeared are Teamsters leaders. The union stunned others when its president, Sean O'Brien, spoke to the Republican convention last month, not to endorse Trump but to argue for bipartisan support for workers' rights. On Tuesday night at the Democratic convention, there was something of an answer to that as U.S. Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan introduced Kenneth Stribling, a retired Teamster from Milwaukee and president of the National United Committee to Protect Pensions, noting it was Biden and Harris — and not Trump — that announced $36 billion in aid to prop up a pension plan benefitting Teamsters workers and retirees.

"They got it done without one single Republican vote in Congress," Stribling said, surrounded by other retired Teamsters.

It left little doubt just how crucial the Democrats believe the union vote is for their side in this election.

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Fain said he understands why O'Brien would do what he did, that there are Trump supporters in the Teamsters, just as there are in the UAW and he agrees that politicians shouldn't expect an automatic endorsement based on party affiliation. Unions can't be complacent in their demands, he said, a belief he showed dramatically by calling the historic strike against all Detroit Three automakers at the same time last year, a fight his predecessors studiously avoided. The UAW held back its own endorsements longer than some other labor unions, including those for Biden and Harris.

But Fain also said he hasn't seen any movement among Republicans to embrace labor rights "so I don't know why I'd go stand in the Republican convention and speak to that when they have no interest in it."

And that sentiment, he has repeatedly said, goes for Trump as well, despite his populist message, claiming the former president has never taken a step to help workers organize to demand better benefits and job protections and instead has talked about companies moving jobs from better-paying states to worse-paying ones to improve profits. And while Trump did renegotiate what was the North American Free Trade Agreement to try to keep more jobs in the U.S., Fain argued Trump never took steps like the Biden administration has to spur growth in the auto industry, including by providing breaks to electric vehicle plants that domestic automakers believe play a large part in the future.

"Donald Trump's a liar," he said. "That's what he is. He's a con artist and it's time we start calling this con for what he is. You know, he talks a big game, but he doesn't deliver."

Fain said that typically, the UAW's polling shows its membership supports Democrats about 65% of the time and Republicans 30%-32%. That's been pretty consistent, he said. But he believes in this election the gap will be bigger for Harris. The reason, he said, is simply comparing the "body of work" of the two presidential candidates and where they stand on issues affecting workers.

"I have immense respect for her. I mean, her whole walk, her whole career, where she came from, what she's aspired to, and she's an amazing woman," he said. "I think people underestimate her, and I think it's a huge mistake."

While the union makes endorsements, Fain noted that it doesn't presume to tell members how to vote, only emphasizing whether in the union's estimation a candidate does or does not stand for workers' rights. "With the messaging we're doing already," Fain said, "they know people that were voting for Trump that are not going to vote for him now. … a lot of our members are persuadable."

Far from taking Fain's attacks without comment, Trump in many ways instigated them. For years, he attacked UAW brass, even before Fain was president, saying they were selling out rank-and-file workers. He continued to make that attack at a non-union plant during the strike last September, claiming that a push to sell electric vehicles would decimate the American auto industry. Once the UAW successfully settled the strike against the Detroit Three automakers for better benefits and job protections, Trump called Fain a "weapon of mass destruction" and promised a "bloodbath" if something wasn't done to save the auto industry.

But that didn't stop Trump from gratefully accepting an endorsement from Elon Musk, who owns electric vehicle maker Tesla, which operates no union plants, and later in a social media interview with Musk praising some company — who the UAW claims in a complaint filed with a federal board was Musk — with threatening employees looking to unionize with termination, a violation of federal law.

In his speech Monday at the Democratic National Convention, Fain laid into Trump, saying that despite his false claims to the contrary, the former president didn't revitalize the auto industry as he promised to do in his first term and that plants closed — including GM's massive plant in Lordstown, Ohio — under Trump's watch without his doing enough to stop it. Auto jobs declined in Michigan during Trump's time in office, even before the COVID-19 shutdowns hit.

"In a world where Donald Trump does nothing but put out his alternative facts, or what we all call lies, I believe it's important that we call them on his lies and that we expose him for what he really is. He's a fraud," Fain said.

Considering that Fain only burst on the national scene with his election as union president 18 months ago, it's remarkable how much of a factor he has become in politics. But he doesn't find it surprising at all.

"It's just indicative of where this nation is right now, where people who are working class ... they've been left behind," he said. "They're looking, they're looking for leadership. They're looking for something better."

Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: UAW's Shawn Fain 'not going to be shy' about going after Trump