President Joe Biden celebrates with United Auto Staff President Shawn Fain after Fain and the UAW endorsed Biden for president at a Community Motion Program legislative conference in Washington, Jan. 24, 2024.
Leah Millis | Reuters
The United Auto Staff union is endorsing President Joe Biden for reelection this 12 months, UAW President Shawn Fain announced Wednesday at a union conference in Washington, D.C.
“Today, I’m proud to rise up here together with your International Executive Board and announce that the UAW is endorsing Joe Biden for President of america,” Fain said. “We’ll reelect Joe Biden.”
The union’s endorsement of a Democratic presidential candidate should not be surprising; nevertheless, it comes after months of apparent resistance by Fain, who said politicians, including Biden, would need to earn UAW endorsements.
“Look, I kept my commitment to be essentially the most pro-union president ever,” Biden said following the endorsement announcement. “Let me just say I’m honored to have your back and you could have mine. That is the deal.”
It also comes on the heels of the Recent Hampshire primary, during which former President Donald Trump defeated former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
“This November, we will rise up and elect someone who stands with us and supports our cause, or we will elect someone who will divide us and fight us every step of the way in which,” Fain said before the endorsement. “That is what this selection is about.”
The endorsement is crucial for any candidate trying to secure the battleground state of Michigan, due to the UAW’s potential influence there. The Detroit-based union has greater than 400,000 energetic members and greater than 580,000 retired members, lots of which reside within the state.
In endorsing Biden, Fain had some strong criticism for his likely Republican opponent, at one point organising a slide of “what Trump said and what actions he took to assist the American auto staff” during his first term. The slide was blank.
“He did nothing, not a rattling thing because he doesn’t care in regards to the American employee,” Fain said. “Donald Trump stands against all the things we stand for as a union, as a society.”
Biden threw his own punches at Trump, whom he expects to face in a general election rematch in November.
“Through the Trump administration, numerous administrations before that, what did they do? So many, so many individuals around America, lost their sense of pride,” he said. “Corporate America found the most affordable labor on this planet and so they sent the roles to those laborers and sent the product back to us. But not anymore.”
The Trump campaign didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.
From the front lines
Fain in May said the union would withhold a reelection endorsement for Biden until the UAW’s concerns in regards to the auto industry’s transition to all-electric vehicles were addressed.
That message was heard loud and clear. In September Biden became the primary sitting U.S. president to affix an energetic UAW picket line, rallying alongside staff outside a General Motors parts facility. The visit got here every week after Fain invited supporters — “from our friends and families all the way in which as much as the president of america” — to affix union picket lines against GM, Ford Motor and Chrysler parent Stellantis.
Fain, on the picket line with Biden at GM’s Willow Run Redistribution Center, called the moment “historic.”
The official reelection endorsement comes months after the union led strikes against the Detroit automakers after the perimeters failed to achieve recent contracts covering about 150,000 autoworkers.
The strikes, which lasted roughly six weeks, ended after each of the businesses reached tentative agreements with the union in late October.
Fain has touted the agreements as assisting within the union’s “just transition” to electric vehicles, noting that staff at many battery cell plants could be included under the UAW’s national negotiations.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an autoworker-focused campaign rally at auto supplier Drake Enterprises, on Sept. 27, 2023 in Clinton Township, Michigan.
Michael Wayland / CNBC
Prior UAW leaders endorsed Biden for election against President Donald Trump in 2020. Nevertheless, Trump notably gained the support of many blue-collar autoworkers during his presidential campaigns.
Michigan voters helped each Biden and Trump to win the White House through the past 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 visit.
Trump’s visit and rally, which largely focused on the auto industry, was criticized by the union and Fain, who has repeatedly said he believes one other Trump presidency could be a “disaster.”
Through the event, Trump several times asked UAW members to encourage union leaders to endorse him.