WASHINGTON—With Democratic President Joseph Biden standing right next to him, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain is virtually guaranteed to announce the union’s endorsement at the end of UAW’s Legislative Conference in D.C. today, January 24.
The endorsement was expected. Politico forecasted it before the three-day event began. But it’s notable because UAW was the one conspicuous AFL-CIO member union absent this past November when the labor federation held a special all-union session in Philadelphia to endorse the Biden-Harris ticket.
Even the Service Employees, who are not AFL-CIO members, sent reps to that November AFL-CIO endorsement session. Only the Teamsters, also not AFL-CIO members, and UAW did not. There were, reports said, some policy disagreements between the White House and UAW, and Fain’s plans mystified Biden staffers.
But conditions have changed since then. Biden became the first incumbent U.S. president ever to join a union picket line, which he did during the UAW’s successful Stand Up! strike against the three Detroit automakers.
And, amid later flak, Teamsters President Shawn O’Brien held a one-on-one closed-door meeting with former GOP Oval Office occupant Donald Trump, who is Biden’s likely foe this fall. Fain has made it very clear that Trump is unacceptable to the UAW.
In an indirect crack at Trump and his allies, Fain told conference attendees in his keynote address on January 22 that “we must take our power back from the billionaire class that has hijacked our society.”
Meanwhile, Trump solidified his stranglehold on the Republican 2024 presidential nomination, for a rerun against Biden, with wins in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.
But even with Fain at his side, all may not be sweetness and light for Biden at the conference podium.
The week before, Fain and other union leaders traveled to Capitol Hill to denounce his unconditional support for right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Jewish state’s “scorched earth” war against Palestinians in Gaza.
More directly, two conference delegates, members of the UAW’s Graduate Student Union at Northeastern University in Boston, Mass., have stood up at the end of speeches—including an address by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt.—unfurled a large Palestinian flag and chanted “Free Palestine!”
May try again
Since all conference attendees are invited to the Biden-Fain session, they may try again, even though, as one informally told People’s World over lunch, their group, along with Arab-American students and staff at the school, feel vulnerable to retaliation.
The q-and-a with Sanders after his speech brought up another problem Biden faces this fall: Trying to woo back white working-class voters, especially men, who saw their jobs disappear to Mexico and other low-wage countries during the last 50 years.
Sanders himself began the Q-and-A with that question.
“He’s telling them what they want to hear,” the first conference attendee to respond replied. “He’s also creating wedges—what you want versus what you need.”
What you want” is pandering to what Fain called “racism, sexism, and xenophobia.” What you need is restoring well-paying union jobs, especially in abandoned areas of the industrial Midwest.
“Solidarity Forever has been running through my mind,” the delegate continued. “What we need is to help each other, not divide each other.”
A second answer blamed “Fox News and the right-wing media,” while a third criticized Biden for emphasizing running against Trump and Trumpism rather than running on his administration’s achievements for workers.
“We need to tell some of the good news,” that answerer continued. Tell voters “how sick we were” four years ago under Trump “and how far we’ve come,” especially economically.
In card-playing terms, he added: “We’re asking Biden to take a two and a seven and turn it into a pair of queens.
“We have to say ‘The market is up,’ which helps our pensions, and inflation is down. I don’t want just to say ‘Donald Trump is a turd.’
“I want to say Joe Biden has done very well.”
“They want to create chaos and have the American people perceive chaos—and then blame Biden for it. We have to let the American people know where the dysfunction is,” Sanders concluded.
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