Union leaders and members at DNC praise Harris, blast Trump

CHICAGO—Union leaders and two union members marched to the podium at the opening day of the Democratic Convention in Chicago, full of praise for Vice President Kamala Harris and blasting at her Republican foe, convicted felon and white nationalist Donald Trump, President Biden’s predecessor.

Auto Workers President Shawn Fain led the parade, after announcing earlier in the day that Stellantis, one of the big three auto companies, has reneged on its contractual commitment to reopen and expand its huge Belvidere plant, starting next year, and achieve full production in three years.

The contracts won by the UAW in its historic strike give the union the right to strike over grievances. Reopening Belvidere was a major and specific UAW win of special concern to the community, the workers, and, of course, their union. “On behalf of autoworkers everywhere, we’re standing up against a company that wants to go back on its commitments and drive a race to the bottom at the expense of the American worker,” Fain said in a union statement.

UAW won back many of the concessions, however, it and its members had lost over the last fifteen years—as well as written commitments from Ford, GM, and Stellantis/FiatChrysler that UAW unionists would be working at the coming generation of electric vehicle assembly and battery plants.

The union agreed to the climate change battle program President Biden strongly supported and Trump, who like other Republicans is a climate denier and fossil fuel booster, opposed. He called Fain “irresponsible” and demanded his replacement.

“We went on strike for forty days, and Donald Trump did nothing,” Fain explained. “Biden stood shoulder to shoulder with us” in front of a Ford plant in Michigan. The strike’s success “produced life-changing gains,” he said.

It also had produced the promised reopening and enlargement of a Stellantis plant in Belvidere, Ill., which the firm closed before the strike began. That plant was the poster child for auto companies’ implementation of a two-tier wage system and its impact on workers and their families. Another life-changing gain in the new pact was the elimination of two-tier wages.

During the historic strike, Trump tried to draw attention from Biden’s picket line walk, staged a rally at a non-union auto parts plant elsewhere in Michigan with a hired small crowd of supporters holding “Auto Workers for Trump” signs. He trashed Fain and the UAW.

“Donald Trump is all for himself, and Harris walks the walk” for workers, Fain said, alluding to her addressing union crowds during this campaign and walking picket lines in her former posts before becoming vice president.

“The UAW will take whatever action is necessary to hold a corporation accountable to all. Donald Trump laughs about firing workers.” Trump actually applauded fellow multimillionaire Elon Musk’s firing of striking workers, as Musk chuckled and grinned on a podcast. The union promptly filed labor law-breaking—formally called unfair labor practices—charges against both.

Referring to the excitement Harris has produced among voters on the campaign trail, he added: “As a great American poet has said, ‘It’s getting hot in here.’”

Fain was being kind, in a way, to Trump. The Republican named prominent members of the corporate class to his administration—though he had to withdraw his initial nominee for Labor Secretary after the revelation of sexual exploitation in the man’s restaurant chain.

The two workers who spoke at the DNC, members of Plumbers Local 489 in Phoenix, drew a contrast in producing jobs between Trump and the Biden-Harris administration. “Donald Trump said he would bring back American jobs. Thanks to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, we are actually building factories of the future. Sometimes we have so many projects we have to subcontract some of the work out to other states.”

“Our local now has 4,800 members, up from 2800 in 2020,” his colleague added. “Thanks to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris” and their plan to combat climate change and their American jobs and infrastructure law, “It’s an exciting time for us and our children.”

The other union leaders emphasized other positive points for workers under the Biden-Harris administration. “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris passed the American Rescue Plan, putting us back to work,” said AFSCME President Lee Saunders. His union of state, county, and municipal workers saw tens of thousands of jobs disappear in one stroke as local tax revenues dried up when the country crashed into the coronavirus-caused depression—a virus Trump at first denied existed.

Harris and Biden “were guided by a principle: More freedom for working people, including freedom to form a union. So this November we’re moving towards the polls for Harris.” And for the Service Employees, its new president, April Verrett, said Harris “walked with us” as a senator and “worked a day with us” when she ran for public offices before.

Other speakers included Democratic lawmakers, Biden—later—and several women who praised Harris’s commitment to enacting a national law restoring the federal constitutional right to abortion. Trump-named U.S. Supreme Court justices were the key votes to eliminate that right two years ago, causing an enormous political backlash among women in red, blue, and purple states.

The women speaking to the convention told of personal experiences—such as one who was a head cheerleader in middle school until her stepfather raped her and made her pregnant, at age 12. No woman should have to go through that without having a choice about pregnancy, she said.

Opposes Gaza policy

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who, like the rest of the very progressive “Squad” in the U.S. House, opposes Biden’s support of the Israeli war on Gaza, said, “I am here because in Kamala Harris we have the chance to elect a president who is from the middle class and for the middle class.”

“And she is for a ceasefire” in the Israeli war “and for bringing the hostages home.” Left unsaid: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes a ceasefire and turns a deaf ear to hostage families while the U.S. continues to supply Israel with the arms it uses to carry on genocidal policies in Gaza.

“Donald Trump could sell his country for dollars in the pockets of his Wall Street friends. But to love this country is to fight for ordinary people like bartenders and fast-food workers,” Ocasio declared. She is a former New York City bartender, and, before that, served a time as a congressional aide.

But Ocasio-Cortez, alone among the speakers, warned that Harris “cannot do it alone.

“We have to elect people who can enact our working agenda” by retaking the U.S. House, where the Democrats trail by five seats, and retaining or expanding the party’s slim U.S. Senate majority.

And Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the lead prosecutor in the second impeachment of Trump—for aiding and abetting the Trumpite invasion and insurrection at the U.S. Capitol three and a half years ago, recalled that conflict. It killed five protective officers and injured dozens more.

“Under Article II, section 2 of the Constitution, the president is to ‘take care the laws should be faithfully executed,’ not that the vice president should be [physically] executed,” said Raskin, a constitutional law professor on leave.

The invaders were angered by Trump Vice President Mike Pence’s defiance of Trump’s demand to decertify electoral votes from key swing states that went for Democratic nominee Joe Biden. They erected a noose on the Capitol lawn. Then they stormed and pillaged the building while carrying a Confederate flag and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence,” and yelling “Where’s Nancy?” while seeking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

They planned to hang both. Both leaders, other lawmakers, aides, and journalists hid and later escaped the rampage, being escorted to safe areas within the Capitol complex.

“Are we going to go back to the days of election suppression and violent insurrection?” asked Raskin. “Are we going to elect Kamala Harris or are we going to let Donald Trump terminate our Constitution?

“We’ve got to elect a career prosecutor,” Harris, “in a landslide, to defeat a career criminal,” Raskin implored. “Let’s have a landslide so big that Trump and his hand-picked Supreme Court justices”—who earlier this year gave Trump virtual immunity from federal prosecution, possibly from two of the four charges related to the insurrection—“can’t even try to steal it.”

Cameron Harrison contributed material for this story.