“Rarely, as a union, do you get so clear of a choice between two candidates,” said UAW president Shawn Fain, as he explained the UAW endorsement. “Donald Trump is a scam. Donald Trump is a billionaire, and that’s who he represents.”
“Joe Biden has earned our endorsement,” Fain added, receiving a standing ovation from the audience.
Later, Biden addressed UAW members in his first campaign event since Tuesday’s primary election in New Hampshire, where Trump secured a decisive victory with Republican voters and Biden notched a write-in win.
“You built these companies,” Biden said, addressing hundreds of cheering UAW members in a hotel ballroom in Washington. “You sacrificed to save them, and you deserve to benefit when these companies thrive,” Biden continued, invoking the losses UAW members took during the Great Recession and auto-companies’ strong rebound in recent years.
A group of UAW members interrupted Biden’s speech at one point, criticizing the president for offering support to Israel in the Gaza War. They were dragged out by security, just a day after protesters with similar concerns disrupted another Biden campaign event.
Coming off a high-profile strike in 2023 that won record wage gains for autoworkers, the UAW had been delaying an endorsement in the race, even as Biden made several trips this fall to support autoworkers, becoming the first sitting president to visit a picket line. The work stoppage also brought Trump to Michigan to woo autoworkers.
The autoworker union’s endorsement has strong implications for the key battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin; Biden narrowly won both states in 2020.
Fain, the UAW’s enthusiastic and relatively new leader, has been an outspoken critic of Trump and has slammed Republican policies to divide the working class “using racism, sexism and xenophobia” during the conference on Monday.
The UAW, which represents around 400,000 members, used the specter of an endorsement as leverage in last year’s autoworker strike, which spotlighted worker concerns in the transition to electric vehicles, a key priority of the Biden administration. The union won new union protections for workers in EV battery plants, and pushed Jeep-owned Stellantis to reopen a shuttered auto-factory in Belvidere, Ill., with the support of the Biden administration.
“Our endorsements are going to be earned. They’re not going to be freely given, as they have been in the past,” Fain told The Post last summer.
Biden has received a stream of earlier-than-typical union endorsements this election cycle, including a June endorsement from the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, and more than a dozen other unions. But a handful of influential unions, including the UAW, the Teamsters, the American Postal Workers Union and the International Association of Fire Fighters, have chosen to continue to wield their endorsement as influence in Washington.
“The union share the vote is incredibly important,” said Steve Rosenthal, a Democratic political strategist in the labor movement for decades. “In the most critical battleground states, the so-called blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that President Biden needs to win to be reelected and that were the reason Trump was elected in 2016, a big share of the votes from union households.”
Brian Rothenberg, a former spokesperson for the UAW and public relations consultant, said that internal surveys early in election seasons typically show about a third of UAW members supporting Democrat presidential candidates, a third supporting Republicans and the remaining third as swing voters. However, past internal surveys after elections show current and retired members usually vote for Democratic presidential candidates by around 60 percent in November.
Biden has frequently touted his ties to labor unions, while straining at times to make inroads with working-class union members. His biggest wins for the labor movement include approving trillions of dollars in spending on infrastructure, semiconductor and climate packages that incentivize companies to hire union workers, as well as installing a labor advocate to lead the National Labor Relations Board and who has made it easier for workers to join unions.
Trump has also called himself “pro worker,” positioning himself as an ally of the working class, while also supporting numerous policies as president that constricted union power. He has received few union endorsements outside of law enforcement unions. His visit to Michigan during the UAW strike featured a rally with autoworkers at a nonunion shop, as union leaders warned the former president to stay away.
