Portside

Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, didn’t mince words in his speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. Wearing a shirt with the words “TRUMP IS A SCAB” emblazoned on the front, Fain told the crowd, “For the UAW and for working people everywhere, it comes down one question: what side are you on? On one side we have Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, who have stood shoulder to shoulder with the working class. On the other side, we have Trump and Vance, two lap dogs for the billionaire class who only serve themselves.” In this exclusive interview, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Fain at the DNC about why the UAW has endorsed Harris-Walz, what is at stake in this election for working people and the labor movement, and which side of the class war Donald Trump is on.

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So we’re here on day three of the Democratic National Convention. I’m standing here with the one and only Shawn Fain, president of the mighty United Auto Workers union. Brother Shawn, you gave a raucous speech on Monday that was well received. Unions supporting Democratic candidates, unions endorsing the Democratic Party is not a new thing. But something new is happening here. You headlining the opening of the DNC, people using the language of labor like Trump is a scab. What do you think it says about today’s labor movement and today’s Democratic Party that this is happening right now?

Shawn Fain:

Well, I just think the party’s realizing getting back to the roots. I mean, the roots of this party were embedded in supporting working class people, and that was always the hardcore base. I believe after the Reagan years and the Bush one years, I think people went a little more center and a little more business friendly, thanks to trickle-down economics and all that under Reagan and working class people continue to go backwards.

And I just believe as we’ve met over the last year and a half with the Biden administration, Vice President Harris, and with a lot of our congressional leaders, we’ve been very, very apparent, very real with them about what we expect, that we have expectations and that we’re not going to just blindly endorse candidates. There are expectations with our endorsements. They’ll be earned and they’ve delivered. And it’s a great thing.

I mean, I can’t tell you in my lifetime when I have heard a presidential candidate talk about corporate greed ever. And it’s awesome to hear Kamala Harris talk about corporate greed. And that is the reason why working class people have been left behind in this country and not affirmative action, not LGBTQ plus people, not those people trying to cross the border that are destitute and desperate, trying to find a better life. We’ve been left behind because of greedy corporations and all the wealth being concentrated in the hands of a few people at the top.

And it’s time we change that. And the one thing I say, the billionaire class and the corporate class have the money, but the working class have the votes. And so as long as they support our initiatives, they’re going to win.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And in that same time span where the party and politics in this country in general made a very hard neoliberal shift, like you said, organized labor itself was on the decline. And of course, you yourself being elected president of UAW represented a sort of shift in the other direction as well. I was wondering what role, what has changed in organized labor over that time as well, and what does the UAW doing that lead that charge?

Shawn Fain:

Well, I mean, look, when Chrysler went through the bankruptcy, I mean, I was 11 years old, ’79, ’80 or 10 years old. But I mean there was a shift I think in the UAW at that time where they endorsed joint programs, the jointness with the companies and we’re in this together type mentality. And working together goes so far, working together to me means we have issues we want to see happen. You have issues, let’s figure out a way that we both come out good in this.

But the way jointness has worked for us over the last 40 years has been the company wants this, and if you do what they want, we’re working together. If you don’t, you’re not a good person. And so it doesn’t work for our workers. Our workers have fallen further and further behind. I believe our leadership for decades has been too complacent.

And there’s a saying, one of my favorite Kennedy quotes, they’re risk and cost to a program of action, but they’re far less than a long-range risk and cost of comfortable inaction. And I believe that’s been applied of our union for the last three decades is just our leadership at the top’s been comfortably inactive, rested on the laurels of people from the fifties and sixties, and that’s not what we’re here for.

We are here to affect change for working-class people. And it’s a fight. And the wealthy, the billionaire, the elite, the few at the top are not going to share anything and we have to fight for it. And so we have three families in America that have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of Americans. That’s inexcusable in this nation. And so we have to fight for that.

And I was a frustrated member for 28 years of my life, but I was always active. And when we were able, thanks to the work of UAWD to get one member, one vote passed through my name in the hat, and I’m standing here today because of that. And I didn’t run to play around. I ran to reform this union and to get this union on the right track and lead our job as union leaders and our job as organized labor should be to lead. We have an obligation to lead the working class, union or not.

And we’ve seen the work of that already. We bargained a great contract and you saw within two weeks, Toyota gave big raises to their people. Honda followed suit, Nissan did because they know we’re coming for, and we call that the UAW Bump. And that’s what happens when you have vibrant unions working hard bargaining the contracts, everyone benefits.

Maximillian Alvarez:

When I was growing up, admittedly as a deeply conservative guy who didn’t know shit about unions and in fact grew up in a kind of anti-union family 20 years ago, 30 years ago, anytime folks started to talk about economic populism or the kind of issues that you’re expressing now, it was immediately like that’s class warfare. That’s class war. But you are, and the labor movement is really not shying away from the language of class war. What do you think has really changed?

Shawn Fain:

Well, because here’s the problem. Class warfare has been going on in this country for 40 years. I mean, the problem is when the billionaire class has taken everything, they don’t consider it class warfare. As long as they got… When they structure the laws and everything to benefit them while workers suffer, it’s not class warfare to them. But it’s exactly what it is.

It’s been going on for 40 years, but the only difference is now we’re going to call it for what it is. And I’m not going to run from that. I mean, yeah, we’re in a class or we’ve been in one for 40 years and it’s time the working class fights back. And whenever the working class fights back, they don’t like it.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And just two more quick questions. One, it was historic that President Biden became the first sitting president to walk a picket line during the UAW’s stand-up strike. For folks out there who are also asking what beyond that is important, symbolic historically, what else has the Democratic Party done to support working people in the labor movement? And what else would you like to see them do to support working people in the labor movement?

Shawn Fain:

I mean, they’ve done a lot. I mean, under the Biden administration, they have done a hell of a lot. You look at the Teamsters for instance. I mean, you had Teamsters here yesterday speaking about the fact that the Biden administration bailed out their pension fund. That’s a big deal, hundreds of millions of dollars. You look at the IRA with the money they created there, the programs they created to build a bunch of factories, battery and EV factories and in the United States, contrary to anything Trump ever did, which was watch factories leave the country.

They’re actually building factories in this country because of the work the Biden-Harris administration did. We benefited from that in Lordstown, Ohio, a plant that closed under Donald Trump’s presidency. Workers were left behind. They were sent all over the country. Now we have a battery plant there, and those workers who were left behind by Trump are coming back under Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.

And you look at the PRO Act, I mean, and this is the biggest indicator to me of why we look at party lines and why people talk about why do we always endorse Democrats. When we tried to pass the PRO Act, every Republican voted against it. Not one Republican supported it. Only Democrats supported it and it didn’t pass, unfortunately. But at the end of the day, it’s very clear.

When you look at the body of work of Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, the Biden administration, you look at the body of work of a lot of the Congress people of how they vote, and it’s very clear who supports working class people and who don’t.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Last question about Trump, because speaking not as a member but as a guy who’s been interviewing workers for years, I interviewed workers at the Lordstown plant. I remember Trump going there and telling people explicitly don’t sell your homes. We’re bringing all those jobs back. Then, of course, GM closed the plant. 14,000 jobs lost. On top of that, Donald Trump gave Mary Barra GM a giant tax cut. What does that say?

I feel like when people hear Trump is a scab, they don’t see that. What does that actually say about Donald Trump and his politics and what they mean for working people?

Shawn Fain:

It’s a testament to who Donald Trump represents. He represents the corporate class and the billionaire class. And I’ll go a step further. Look just last week, Donald Trump and Elon Musk on the Twitter podcast, whatever the hell it was. I mean laughing Donald Trump saying, Elon Musk, you’re the best cutter. You’re the greatest cutter, and laughing about firing striking workers. That is a federally protected right for workers to go on strike for better conditions. And they laugh about the fact that they fire people.

That says it all for working class people. It says it should say it all for union people that if you go on strike and Donald Trump’s your president, you may be fired. That won’t happen under Kamala Harris and Tim Walz presidency and vice presidency. They walked the picket lines with us. Joe Biden walked the picket line with us. Kamala Harris was on the picket line in 2019 with us, and Tim Walz was on last year with us.

So it’s just more of the same. Donald Trump has one interest, and that’s for the rich to get richer and everybody else to be left behind. He serves himself. And Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, they’re one of us. They’re working class people with working class roots and they care about people.

And that’s what this is all about. This election’s about coming together as a nation, standing together, people of all walks of life unifying and taking back our lives. And Donald Trump and his party, they preach division. They want to keep us divided so they can conquer. And that’s what they’ve been doing and we got to change it.

Maximillian Alvarez is Real News Network Editor-in-Chief.  

Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories and struggles that you care about most, and we need your help to keep doing this work. We rely on donations from people like you who care about our work to remain independent. If you value The Real News as a platform for movement-building journalism, please support us today!  Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today!