UAW President Slams Trump For Planning Union Rally At Non-Union Business: ‘Pathetic Irony’
The president of the United Auto Workers accused former President Donald Trump of making a major gaffe even before opening his mouth in Michigan Wednesday as he tries to convince union auto workers he’s on their side.
“I find the pathetic irony that the former president is gonna hold a rally for union members at a non-union business,” Shawn Fain told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
Indeed, Trump planned to speak “with a group of mostly retired UAW members in Macomb County at a plant that is not affiliated with the UAW as he skips a second Republican debate,” according to Fox2 in Detroit. After the venue was announced on Monday, the Michigan AFL-CIO confirmed that “Drake Enterprises is a non-union manufacturer and supplier.”
The Trump team hasn’t commented on how it chose Drake Enterprises to host the former president.
“His track record speaks for itself,” Fain said of Trump’s reputation with the unions:
In 2008 during the Great Recession, he blamed UAW members. He blamed our contracts for everything that was wrong with these companies. That’s a complete lie.
In 2015 when he was running for president, he talked about doing a rotation: taking all these good-paying jobs in the Midwest and moving them somewhere in the South where people work for less money. And then to make people beg for their jobs back at lower wages.
Fain continued:
And the ultimate show of his – how much he cares about our workers — was in 2019 when he was the president of the United States. Where was he then? GM – our workers at GM — were on strike for 60 days. For two months, they were out there on the picket lines. I didn’t see him hold a rally. I didn’t see him stand up at the picket line. And I sure as hell didn’t hear him comment about it. He’s missing in action.
On Tuesday, Joe Biden became the only sitting U.S. president to join the UAW picket line, where he told workers, “You deserve what you earned and you earned more than what you get paid now.”
Watch the clip above via CNN.
