Surprise! Michigan’s Biggest Labor Union Endorses a Democrat — Again
The GOP should stop courting the bosses and focus on members
Growing up in suburban Detroit, most of my friends’ dads worked for the Big Three. They took orders from their bosses at General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford, and those bosses were always looking over their shoulders wondering when the real boss—the United Auto Workers union—might show up.
Who has benefited from this relationship? The labor union, of course, claims its members have. But the UAW’s decision to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, proves what many Detroit auto workers have felt for years: The union bosses aren’t very concerned with promoting workers’ interests at all.
“We stand at a crossroads in this country,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement last week, adding, “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.”
The UAW’s endorsement isn’t a surprise. In fact, that’s the very problem. The union, which represents more than 370,000 workers in Rust Belt states such as Michigan, has served as an unofficial arm of the Democratic Party since its creation in the 1930s. Even now, as Harris and the rest of the Biden administration implement green-energy policies that put tens of thousands of its own members’ jobs at risk, the UAW would rather simp for the Democratic ticket instead of rally behind the guy who has vowed not to outsource jobs to China.
And that’s because UAW union leadership—and rest of Big Labor—is part of the upper crust that the Democratic Party represents. UAW President Shawn Fain, for example, was raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2023 while his union’s members got paid a measly $500 a week during the strikes he organized.
