UAW endorses Kamala Harris for president

By TIM ROWDEN
Editor-in-Chief

The United Auto Workers union has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president of the United States.

The UAW International Executive Board voted July 31 to endorse Harris, noting how her historic candidacy builds on the Biden-Harris administration’s proven track record of standing with the UAW and delivering major gains for the working class.

Years before the UAW’s Stand Up Strike last year, Harris walked the picket line with striking autoworkers in 2019. The UAW said she also has taken on corporate price-gouging and profiteering, and has spoken out and voted against unfair trade deals that hurt the American worker like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), also known as NAFTA 2.0.

On Aug. 7, Harris traveled to Detroit to rally with UAW members and leaders, Michigan voters, and thousands of working class people who are fighting for a better future to hear about the issues that matter to Michigan workers.   

‘AT A CROSSROADS’
“We stand at a crossroads in this country,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement. “We can put a billionaire back in office who stands against everything our union stands for, or we can elect Kamala Harris who will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us in our war on corporate greed.

“This campaign is bringing together people from all walks of life, building a movement that can defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box. For our one million active and retired members, the choice is clear: We will elect Kamala Harris to be our next president this November.” 

Fain said the union’s “job” in this year’s election was to defeat Trump.

STRONG BASE
The UAW has more than a million active and retired members with a strong base in what Democrats call the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The UAW endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection bid in January, just a few months after he joined striking General Motors workers on the picket lines near Detroit during the union’s historic and victorious “Stand Up” strike against all three Detroit automakers, which secured historic raises for autoworkers.

The UAW says its union members and retirees typically lean toward Democrats, but a sizeable number support the GOP. The Associated Press’ AP VoteCast, found that 56 percent of union members and households backed Biden in 2020, while 42 percent backed Trump.

SCABBING AND LIES
Fain and the UAW have called Trump a “scab,” noting his anti-worker policies and the fact that he did nothing for workers in Ohio when General Motors closed the Lordstown Assembly plant there in 2019.

Trump recently called for UAW members to fire Fain, falsely claiming the U.S. auto industry was near obliteration and – again falsely – that Fain allowed Chinese automakers to build auto factories across the border in Mexico to ship electric vehicles to the U.S. without tariffs.

The auto industry is far from obliteration. The Associated Press reports Detroit auto companies are making billions and auto manufacturing employment is up 13.8 percent since Biden took office.

As for Chinese automakers building factories in Mexico, industry analysts know of no such factories under construction, the Associated Press reported.

Trump said he would put tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs), but Biden already did that earlier this year, placing tariffs on Chinese imported goods, including EVs.