By Chris Isidore, CNN
New York (CNN) — United Auto Workers union President Shawn Fain was one of the most prominent union leaders backing Vice President Kamala Harris in this year’s US presidential election and one of the harshest critics of Donald Trump while on the campaign trail.
And because of that, he’ll have a powerful enemy when Trump takes back the White House on January 20.
But making powerful enemies is nothing new for Fain. During his less than two years atop the UAW, Fain has taken on risky fights against powerful adversaries – and often won.
In May 2023 he toppled the long-entrenched leadership of the UAW, running as an outsider in the first popular vote for the union presidenvy. Despite winning by only a 500-vote margin, Fain took quick action, leading the first-ever strike against against GM, Ford and Stellantis, at the same time in September, a strategy few industry observers thought the union would try after decades of striking only one company at a time.
He ended up winning record contracts that included an immediate wage increase of at least 11% and a $5,000 signing bonus, raises totaling 25% through the four-year life of the contract, a return of cost-of-living adjustments to protect against inflation and increased job security guarantees.
He then announced an effort to organize 13 nonunion automakers and quickly succeeded at Volkswagen, the first automaker to unionize in the United States in decades.
He’s also embraced the industry’s shift to electric vehicles, even as it risks the jobs of his members who now build transmissions and engines used in gasoline-powered cars, including in his hometown of Kokomo, Indiana. With the Big Three automakers all committing to an all-electric future in the years ahead, and with new factories being built to allow for that shift, Fain won promises that workers at the new plants could be under the same national contract as those at existing factories, another contract achievement few thought was possible going into the strike.
And Fain is now threatening an unprecedented second strike against Stellantis, maker of Chrysler, Ram, Dodge and Jeep brands. Typically strikes are not allowed while operating under a labor deal, only when the contract expires. But the UAW won the right to go on strike to challenge plant closings and it says the automaker is not living up to its promises. Stellantis insists it is complying with the 2023 labor agreement and is challenging the legality of UAW members holding such a strike vote.
High profile in presidential election
But perhaps Fain’s riskiest move was outside labor relations and in the world of electoral politics, in which he was one of the most prominent union leaders backing Harris and slamming Trump on the campaign trail.
At the Democratic National Convention in August, Fain wore a t-shirt reading “Trump is a scab”and called the Republican ticket “lap dogs for the billionaire class who only serve themselves.”
And his activity also made Fain a target of Trump’s wrath. Trump even took time in his convention acceptance speech to call for Fain to be fired.
Now Trump is the president-elect, and his administration is chock full of the billionaires Fain has railed against, most notably key supporter Elon Musk, whose battles with the UAW go back years before Fain took the helm.
Unlike Fain’s labor wins, his political bet this year didn’t pay off: Trump won both Michigan, home of the Big Three automakers, and the presidential election. And it brought home how much opposition Fain faces even among his own members in his vocal criticisms of Trump.
Facing some rank-and-file opposition
Support for Trump has grown among rank-and-file union members, particularly among blue-collar union members without a college degree.
CNN exit polls show that 45% of voters from households with a union member voted for Trump this year, up from 40% in 2020 and 42% in 2016.
The UAW released its own poll two weeks before the election that it said showed majority support for Harris over Trump among UAW rank-and-file, especially in battleground states like Michigan, where it has more than 300,000 active and retired members. But it also showed a large percentage of members still undecided even that close to the election.
After the election, Fain issued a message to membership saying that he and union members needed to continue the battles they were waging before the election.
“For us, this was never about party or personality,” he wrote. “Both parties share blame for the one-sided class war that corporate America has waged on our union, and on working-class Americans for decades. And we stand today where we stood last week.”
Beyond politics, Fain still has to worry about opposition within the union from members dissatisfied with the results of last year’s strikes. The ratification votes showed 31% of union members at Ford and Stellantis rejected the deal, as did 45% at General Motors.
Some union officers have also accused Fain of improperly reducing their duties because they disagreed with him over expenditures of union funds. Those allegations are being investigated by a court-appointed union monitor.
While Fain has denied any wrongdoing, it is a sign that he could face a bruising battle of his own if – and when – he runs for re-election in 2026.
Others take a different path
And leaders of other unions have been cozying up to Trump, including Teamsters union President Sean O’Brian, who spoke at the Republican convention, and Harold Daggett, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association, which had 50,000 members go on strike this fall at three dozen port facilities along the East and Gulf Coasts. While neither union endorsed Trump, neither endorsed Biden either.
Even Fain’s support for the Democrats took a while to come about. While many unions rushed to endorse President Joe Biden early in 2023, the UAW held off, even after Biden appeared on a UAW picket line during its strike.
But by this past summer Fain was clearly all-in for first Biden, and then Harris.
Asked by CNN in October if he was worried about publicly supporting Harris despite widespread support among rank-and-file UAW members for Trump, Fain said he was confident that a majority of members agreed with him – and that his voice in the election was important, no matter what polls say about members’ attitudes.
“Half our members don’t support Donald Trump, and half of blue-collar workers don’t support Donald Trump. Let’s be clear about that,” he said. “(But) I have the responsibility to be a leader. There’s a correlation between the ballot box and the bread box.”
“What we achieve at the bargaining table can be taken away in the halls of Congress tomorrow,” he said, referring to things like federal government financial support of the auto industry’s investment in EVs and battery plants, which the union and its automakers are depending upon for future auto jobs.
And Fain said that Trump never supported the union when it went on strike against GM in 2019 when he was president and didn’t follow through on promises to stop auto plants from closing.
“Trump did not bring back the auto industry,” Fain said at his Democratic convention speech. “When Donald Trump was president, auto plants closed. Trump did nothing.”
The-CNN-Wire
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