President Joe Biden celebrates with United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain after Fain and the UAW endorsed Biden for president at a Community Action Program legislative convention in Washington, Jan. 24, 2024.
Leah Millis | Reuters
The United Auto Workers union is endorsing President Joe Biden for reelection this yr, UAW President Shawn Fain introduced Wednesday at a union convention in Washington, D.C.
“Today, I’m proud to face up right here together with your International Executive Board and announce that the UAW is endorsing Joe Biden for President of the United States,” Fain mentioned. “We will reelect Joe Biden.”
The union’s endorsement of a Democratic presidential candidate should not be shocking; nonetheless, it comes after months of obvious resistance by Fain, who mentioned politicians, including Biden, must earn UAW endorsements.
“Look, I stored my dedication to be essentially the most pro-union president ever,” Biden mentioned following the endorsement announcement. “Let me simply say I’m honored to have your again and you’ve got mine. That’s the deal.”
It additionally comes on the heels of the New Hampshire primary, wherein Trump defeated former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
“This November, we will get up and elect somebody who stands with us and helps our trigger, or we will elect somebody who will divide us and combat us each step of the way in which,” Fain mentioned earlier than the endorsement. “That’s what this selection is about.”
The endorsement is essential for any candidate seeking to safe the battleground state of Michigan, due to the UAW’s potential affect there. The Detroit-based union has greater than 400,000 lively members and greater than 580,000 retired members, lots of which reside within the state.
In endorsing Biden, Fain had some sturdy criticism for his probably Republican opponent, at one level organising a slide of “what Trump mentioned and what actions he took to assist the American auto employees” throughout his first time period. The slide was clean.
“He did nothing, not a rattling factor as a result of he would not care concerning the American employee,” Fain mentioned. “Donald Trump stands towards every thing we stand for as a union, as a society.”
Biden threw his personal punches at Trump, whom he expects to face in a normal election rematch in November.
“During the Trump administration, a number of administrations earlier than that, what did they do? So many, so many individuals round America, misplaced their sense of satisfaction,” he mentioned. “Corporate America discovered the most affordable labor on the earth and so they despatched the roles to these laborers and despatched the product again to us. But not anymore.”
The Trump marketing campaign didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
From the entrance traces
Fain in May mentioned the union would withhold a reelection endorsement for Biden till the UAW’s issues concerning the auto trade’s transition to all-electric autos have been addressed.
That message was heard loud and clear. In September Biden turned the primary sitting U.S. president to affix an lively UAW picket line, rallying alongside employees exterior a General Motors components facility. The go to got here per week after Fain invited supporters — “from our mates and households all the way in which as much as the president of the United States” — to affix union picket traces towards GM, Ford Motor and Chrysler mother or father Stellantis.
Fain, on the picket line with Biden at GM’s Willow Run Redistribution Center, known as the second “historic.”
The official reelection endorsement comes months after the union led strikes towards the Detroit automakers after the perimeters failed to succeed in new contracts overlaying about 150,000 autoworkers.
The strikes, which lasted roughly six weeks, ended after every of the businesses reached tentative agreements with the union in late October.
Fain has touted the agreements as helping within the union’s “simply transition” to electrical autos, noting that employees at many battery cell crops could be included below the UAW’s nationwide negotiations.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks throughout an autoworker-focused marketing campaign rally at auto provider Drake Enterprises, on Sept. 27, 2023 in Clinton Township, Michigan.
Michael Wayland / CNBC
Prior UAW leaders endorsed Biden for election towards President Donald Trump in 2020. However, Trump notably gained the help of many blue-collar autoworkers throughout his presidential campaigns.
Michigan voters helped each Biden and Trump to win the White House throughout the previous two presidential elections.
Trump, the front-runner amongst Republicans within the 2024 presidential race, hosted a rally at a Michigan plant of a nonunion supplier the week of Biden’s picket-line go to.
Trump’s go to and rally, which largely targeted on the auto trade, was criticized by the union and Fain, who has repeatedly mentioned he believes one other Trump presidency could be a “catastrophe.”
During the occasion, Trump a number of occasions requested UAW members to encourage union leaders to endorse him.