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From UAW President Shawn Fain:
"The UAW supports aggressive tariff action to protect American manufacturing jobs as a good first step to undoing decades of anti-worker trade policy. We do not support using factory workers as pawns in a fight over immigration or drug policy.
We are willing to support the Trump Administration’s use of tariffs to stop plant closures and curb the power of corporations that pit US workers against workers in other countries.
But so far, Trump’s anti-worker policy at home, including dissolving collective bargaining agreements and gutting the National Labor Relations Board, leaves American workers facing worsening wages and working conditions even while the administration takes aggressive tariff action.
If Trump is serious about bringing back good blue collar jobs destroyed by NAFTA, the USMCA, and the WTO, he should go a step further and immediately seek to renegotiate our broken trade deals.
The national emergency we face is not about drugs or immigration, but about a working class that has fallen behind for generations while corporate America exploits workers abroad and consumers at home for massive Wall Street paydays.
We need to stop plant closures, bring back American jobs, and stop the global race to the bottom immediately. Any tariff action must be followed with a renegotiation of the USMCA, and a full review of the corporate trade regime that has devastated the American and global working class.”
We need an emote that just a picture of Settlers
What’s funny is that UAW has lots of communists (and even worse, Communists) in it and probably one of the most storied histories of radical labor organizing in the US. The union is just dominated by a reactionary old guard and is thoroughly undemocratic and corrupt. Shawn Fain was effectively the compromise candidate imposed on them by the DoL and was only elected by a tiny portion of the membership.
Which ones are we talking about here? I’m just passingly familiar with CPUSA’s helping hand in the founding of UAW and the sit-down strikes and their purging from the union shortly after, but UAWs so outside of my sphere I don’t really know what kinds of folks are running around their shop floors today.
Around a quarter of UAW members work in higher education, mostly as graduate workers/PhD students. A lot of these efforts are led by student activists who are usually some kind of radical. Where I live an ongoing campaign has deep ties to the CPUSA and basically revitalized their chapter here. I’m assuming that’s generally the case though idk if the CP is as deeply rooted in all the campaigns as the one I’m familiar with because they’re very quiet about it.
Also an openly Trotskyist WSWS candidate ran in the first round of their election fof their president and got like 5% of the vote.
Thank you for sharing, it’s always a surprise to know how many pies unions have their fingers in. From teamsters nurses to UAW grad workers. Really helps elucidate the fact that unions are much more than a bunch of schluby pawpawps in hard hats and reflective vests.
Most (all?) unions currently have in their constitution a clause where all members must attest that they are not a communist. Openly endorsing communism gets you kicked out. Interestingly enough, this also applies to fascism…
What is this? The Iron Front?