UAW’s Fain opens town hall by announcing picket line death

UAW President Shawn Fain wore the union's now famous Trump is a Scab shirt at the Democratic National Convention. At the just-held state of the union talk the workers chanted "Trump is a Scab" after Fain told them about his anti-labor record. | Nathan Howard/SIPA USA via AP

DETROIT—United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain had sad news to report to his members’ Town Hall on September 30 before launching into discussing politics, the struggle with Stellantis, and other topics: Yet another death on a picket line.

“While holding the line at Eaton Aerospace” in Jackson, Mich., where hundreds of workers were forced to walk earlier in the week, “several members of Local 475 were struck by a driver who lost control of his vehicle,” Fain said.

“One of our UAW family was killed and others were critically injured. No one should be killed while standing up for justice and no one should have to risk their lives while seeking justice for themselves and their families,” Fain said of “this devastating tragedy.”

Police later identified the dead worker as Seth Webb, 23. He was taken across Michigan Avenue, where the picket line was set up, to Henry Ford Hospital, where he died. Four other picketing workers were injured, two of them critically.

Driver Jayden Chase, charged with driving while intoxicated and causing death, was reportedly drag racing down Michigan Avenue in his Ford F-150 near midnight on September 29 when he lost control of it and hit the picketers.

Fain demanded, in Webb’s name, that the aerospace firm “immediately settle this contract and stop pushing a two-tier system to gut the retirement of hundreds of workers who make this company profitable.”

After reporting to his members about Webb’s death and on other conflicts with bosses, Fain turned to the double heart of his report: Politics, and the conflict with Stellantis, formerly FiatChrysler, which may lead to a strike against the automaker.

His announcements about politics, at this town hall, are part of a pattern of unions holding town halls to rev up enthusiasm and votes for the endorsed Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris for president and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a union member and teacher, for VP, especially in the key Great Lakes swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. A union women’s summit, with several leaders, was scheduled for prime time on Oct. 1, and the Communications Workers will have their own town hall meeting on Oct. 7.

“Who we elect” this fall “will affect every single contract and every single organizing campaign,” Fain warned.

That’s particularly important in the presidential race because GOP nominee “Donald Trump is against us, against our union, against the working class and against everything we stand for,” Fain declared to a jam-packed crowd in Detroit on Sept. 30 and Zoom viewers nationwide.

That statement set off the crowd, which chanted repeatedly that, as Fain put it months ago, “Trump is a scab.”

Fain’s speech to that UAW nationwide town hall, plus similar sessions scheduled in prime time on Oct 1 for union women and on Oct.7 for the Communications Workers, highlight Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s need for significant margins from two key groups of voters to beat Trump: Unionists and women.

UAW members and other industrial and building trades unionists are a large share of blue-collar white men in the Great Lakes swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Trump carried them eight years ago. Women, a majority of voters, are still angry and energized by Trump’s Supreme Court justices being the core of the bloc that obliterated the national constitutional right to abortion.

Fain outlined the stark differences between Harris, the Democratic nominee whom UAW—and almost all of organized labor—has endorsed, and convicted felon Trump, the former Republican president, a white nationalist, and a union hater.

Trump did nothing

“On one side, you have Donald Trump, a billionaire” who did nothing to help UAW members who struck GM when Harris was in the U.S. Senate, said Fain. By contrast, she “was on the picket line with us.”

Then Fain posted a slide of a Trump statement at that time, reading “I think unions are hurting very badly what’s going on with these companies.” Added Fain of Trump: “He said nothing and he did nothing when GM closed plants in Warren, Mich., Lordstown, Ohio, and Baltimore.

“And then Trump blessed Elon Musk by saying striking workers should be fired” in a recent podcast between the two magnates. Musk is a notorious labor law-breaker at his Tesla electric vehicle plants.

Harris “voted against Trump’s NAFTA,” the Republican’s original version of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement. Pressure from labor, including the UAW, the AFL-CIO, and the Teamsters, pushed congressional Democrats to force Trump to rewrite the pact, making it more worker-friendly and not tilted to the corporate class, as the original NAFTA was.

“In 2026, NAFTA is up for revision. Do we really want Donald Trump—who let plants close—to negotiate it?” Fain asked.

“And last year” during UAW’s Stand Up strike against the Detroit carmakers “Trump held a rally at a non-union shop and blamed the union” for automakers’ commitment to electric vehicles. That same day, Harris’s boss, Democratic President Joe Biden, “walked our picket line.”

Though politics was a prime topic of Fain’s talk, it wasn’t the only one. High on his mind was conflict with Stellantis, formerly Fiat/Chrysler over the firm’s plans to disobey the sections of its UAW contract committing it to reopening the Belvidere, Ill., plant and what Fain said is Chrysler’s plan to outsource four-fifths of its vehicle production to plants overseas.

He reminded the crowd that UAW’s new pacts with Ford, GM, and Stellantis let the union strike over such changes and grievances. Fain called on all Stellantis plant locals to file grievances in the Belvidere case.

The union’s Stellantis Council voted unanimously in late September to tell members to prepare for a strike authorization vote and to start saving up in the event the firm forces them to walk. They’ll also hold a Keep the Promise Rally on October 3 at 3:30 PM in Sterling Heights, Mich.

“We are done with the days of plant closures,” the council said in its announcement.

“We won product and investment commitments from Stellantis in our 2023 contract. And we won the right to strike to make sure they KEEP THE PROMISE.” (UAW’s emphasis)

Fain also announced the Postal Workers, AFT, and health care unions, along with “unions lining up all over the world, too” are planning for common contract expiration dates on May Day, 2028. That would raise the prospect of a worldwide general strike against the bosses to gain living wages, the right to organize, and safe and healthy working conditions, Fain previously said.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Mark Gruenberg

Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.