Shawn Fain Explains Everything

UAW President Shawn Fain spoke to UAW members last night

The title of this post is not an exaggeration, this was a wide-ranging speech that went from auto plant capacity in the US to the rights of student protestors on college campuses.

I read some of the media coverage and then listened to Fain’s whole speech and, well, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the media coverage cherry picks where Fain agrees with Trump (reordering trade rules) and skips over how literally the whole rest of the speech is an attack on the Right. I think we in the US are not accustomed to hearing from trade unionists so we slot them into “Democrat” or “Republican” when really trade unionists like Fain are on the Left, meaning they see the world in terms of a class struggle. This is just not a view we see espoused in the mainstream in the US, so we don’t really know what to do with it when we hear it.

Fain opened with describing two shifts that are happening simultaneously – an upending of global trade along with an attack on fundamental rights - workers rights, civil rights, and basic human rights.

He went on to explain how labor views politics – not as a “about personalities or parties” but instead as a negotiation where labor focuses on what they need for the working class and what it’s going to take to get it: “we’re not aligning with the Trump Administration, we’re negotiating with the Trump Administration”

On tariffs, he says they don’t support reckless and chaotic trade policy but also can’t just support the status quo on trade – what he calls “the free trade disaster”

He asks - how do we end the free trade disaster while also protecting our right to organize and join a union? How do we end the free trade disaster while also protecting our right to protest genocide, our right to vote, or our right to receive basic health care?

He says Trump is responsible for destruction of bargaining rights for a million federal workers, gutting the NLRB, trampling of basic 1^st Amendment and due process rights on college campuses and attacks on Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

“We are not Democrats and we’re not Republicans, we are trade unionists and we support Democrats when they support the issues and policies working people need”

 "there's been no change in where we stand politically as a union." 

"We expect, no matter what party someone comes from, to stand up for what we believe in. So just because we find common ground on tariffs or on trade doesn't mean that everything else goes out the window."

 One more thing- I keep seeing uninformed claims made about labor union members on Bluesky, how they are “majority” Republican. 60% of union members say they align politically with the Democratic Party. 55% of labor union members supported Harris in 2024. We can be mad about losing the last election without bitterly and vindictively making shit up about the parts of our coalition we dislike. You can dislike labor unions or labor unionists and think the Democratic Party should jettison this part of the coalition, but claiming the majority of them don’t support Democrats is just a lie.

Although many demographic groups shifted their votes to favor Donald Trump in 2024 compared to 2020, Kamala Harris increased Democratic support among union voters.

If Democrats got 55% of the whole working class like they get 55% of union members Democrats would carry Texas. Union members are not our problem. I would suggest we stop parsing which voters are the most loyal, lockstep Democrats and kicking everyone else out of the club and start figuring out how to attract more voters.