Shawn Fain, head of the United Auto Workers, said during the Monday campaign stop that comparing the candidates’ records and stances offers 'a very clear picture of who stands with labor and who don’t give a [expletive] about working-class people.'
Published: Oct. 21, 2024, 10:26 p.m.For labor leaders like Shawn Fain and Dan Vincente, the 2024 election has become a battle on two fronts — the first being to defeat Republicans that could wreck their unions, and the second being to repair Democrats’ ability to speak to the blue-collar base.
Fain’s use of profanity was not out of the ordinary at Monday afternoon’s meeting with roughly two dozen politically engaged union members. In fact, it spoke to one of their core concerns — that Democrats, even though their policies have been objectively better for the working class, have struggled to communicate this to blue-collar voters.
In 2016, a big chunk of union members defected to Trump, with Hillary Clinton winning only 53% of the union vote. Biden improved this to around 60% in 2020 — although union members without a college degree still favored Trump, and recent polling suggests thatThe trend might seem counterintuitive, given the list of successes under Harris and President Joe Biden that Fain and others stressed on Tuesday.
But some long-time union members said they’ve seen their organizations shift right in a way that seems divorced from their material conditions. “Because when we fight over all those things, we’re pointing the finger at somebody else as a reason for our misery,” Fain continued. “We’re not looking at the true reason, which is corporate greed run amok and a billionaire class taking all the profits.”
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