Usually, when politicians make public appearances to take a stand with striking workers, they're well received, or at least politely so.
Yesterday, however, we witnessed something more unusual as the UAW's (United Automobile Workers) lead negotiator in contract negotiations with General Motors issued a scathing statement about former President Donald Trump on Wednesday, just hours before the latter was due to speak in Detroit.
The remark didn't go unnoticed and gives an idea of the kind of stormy weather to expect if Donald Trump were to return to the White House.
Mike Booth, UAW Vice President for General Motors (GM), sent the Detroit Free Press an insult-laden email, in which he shares his thoughts on Donald Trump's trip to Michigan.
The words are scathing and unequivocal.
“Let me be blunt. Donald Trump is coming off as a pompous (expletive)," Booth wrote in the email. "Coming to Michigan to speak at a nonunion employer and pretending it has anything to do with our fight at the Big Three is just more verbal diarrhea from the former president.”
Trump was scheduled to speak at prime time in front of Drake Enterprises, in Clinton Township. This auto parts supplier is non-union. According to an Associated Press report, Donald Trump was to address a crowd of “several hundred current and former UAW members, as well as members of plumbers and pipefitters unions.”
Booth's remarks came just before he and GM negotiators were to return to the main bargaining table with company management on Wednesday afternoon.
Booth labeled Donald Trump's visit to Detroit insincere given his past. In a video about plant closures that the union released Wednesday morning, footage from 2017 shows the former president promising Ohio auto workers he would save their jobs. But in 2019, GM closed its Lordstown assembly plant in northeast Ohio, displacing thousands of workers and contributing to the union's strike against GM in 2019.
“Where were his rallies for striking workers when we were on the picket line in 2019? Where are the jobs he promised to return to the U.S. while on the campaign trail in 2015?" Booth said. "The proof is in the pudding. His actions in office went to enrich the very elite few while the working class of America stagnated. This stunt is another ploy to pull the wool over the eyes of the working class. Again!,” wrote Booth.
The U.S. elections aren’t until November 2024, but the campaign is already underway. And for both leading candidates, union support is crucial. In 2016, Michigan UAW members helped Trump win the White House. In 2020, they helped Biden take it from Trump. Look no further.
Trump has not expressed support for the union's demands, unlike Joe Biden, who says the workers deserved a good contract and the 40-percent raise. Trump did say, however, that UAW workers should reject the automakers' transition to manufacturing more electric vehicles. The Biden administration and the Democrats have a green agenda and favour electric vehicles.
UAW President Shawn Fain hasn't endorsed either presidential candidate, saying that whoever gets the support has to earn it. But he has no plans to meet Trump, as he told CNN: "I don't see the point of meeting him”, because Trump doesn't care what “the working class stands for”." Fain added that “In 2019, when he was president of the United States, where was he? Our workers at GM were on strike for two months. I didn't see him hold a rally, I didn't see him on the picket line. He was missing in action.”