His speech comported with the themes that the UAW’s Fain emphasized in introducing Biden and appears to be emphasizing everywhere he goes: that the UAW’s goal, beginning with its organizing campaigns at the nation’s non-union auto plants, is to politically and economically activate the entire working class. That’s not really been a UAW theme since the presidencies of its postwar leaders: the legendary Walter Reuther and his two Reutherite successors, Leonard Woodcock and Doug Fraser. During their presidencies, of course, the UAW had three times the members (and sometimes more) than it has today; automaking was by most accounts the center of the American economy; and the UAW itself was the anchor tenant in the house of postwar liberalism, using its enormous resources to provide crucial funding to the
movements for civil rights, women’s rights, and environmental preservation and mitigation. It still backs progressive movements: In Fain’s speech, he referred to the right to love who one chooses, and in the press gaggle he held following the session, when asked about the immigrants at the border, he said they were, like most immigrants of yore, "desperate" people just seeking a safe and decent life. But the union is now, aspirationally and commendably, punching above its weight in an America where manufacturing constitutes a much smaller share of the economy than it did in Reuther’s
day. And its punching is centered on economics and shifting the balance of class power, as he made clear in explaining why the union had just endorsed Biden for re-election. (During his talk, he showed videos of Biden’s appearance on the union’s picket line, and of Donald Trump’s response during the 40-day strike the union waged against GM in the third year of Trump’s presidency: That screen was blank.) Right now, as Josh Eidelson’s excellent cover story on Fain in the new issue of BloombergBusinessweek makes clear, Fain is the
one labor leader with the credibility and militance to speak as something of a tribune for the nation’s working class. Not since Reuther has a UAW president played that role. But manufacturing now employs just a tenth of the U.S. workforce, far from the nearly 50 percent it employed in Reuther’s day. There’s one other union president—like Fain, also elected by his union’s rank and file; like Fain, coming off a landmark union victory (at UPS); and like Fain, also named Shawn, though he spells it differently—whose union has to follow where the UAW just went if we’re really to roll the union on: the Teamsters’ Sean O’Brien, who has vowed his union will take on Amazon. Logistics, transportation, and retail dwarf manufacturing in today’s economy, and it’s in those sectors where empowering workers will have the greatest and most salutary effect. Seans (or Shawns), go to! Joe will have your
back.
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