Sean Fain, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), criticized former President Trump on Tuesday over his labor policies, claiming that “Trump doesn’t care about working-class people.”
“Donald Trump is a big talker and a master of bullshit,” Fein told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. “The bottom line is that Donald Trump doesn’t care about working-class people, and he’s shown that during his presidency.”
“And you know, in 2019 he talks about saving the auto industry, bringing the auto industry back. Where the hell was he when he was president?” he continued. “Because factories were closing. A factory in Lordstown, Ohio, closed. Donald Trump told the people there not to sell their houses. So what did he do? He didn’t do anything. He said nothing. That factory closed. The workers were shipped all over the country.”
Fein has emerged as a vocal critic of President Trump as the UAW becomes a major force in the 2024 elections after endorsing President Biden and then Vice President Harris ahead of November after Biden dropped out of the race.
The comments came on the same day that the UAW filed a labor grievance against both President Trump and social platform X owner Elon Musk for comments they made about firing striking workers during a livestreamed interview on X’s Space platform on Tuesday.
“I mean, I look at what you guys are doing,” Trump told Musk. “You guys come into a company and say, ‘Do you want to quit?’ They start a strike. I won’t say the names of the companies, but they start a strike. And you say, ‘All right, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. So you’re all gone.'”
Federal law protects striking workers from dismissal, making the threat of dismissal illegal, the UAW argued in its lawsuit.
“This is exactly what we mean when we say Donald Trump is a strikebreaker,” Fain said in a statement early Wednesday, a nickname he has used for the former president before. “This is exactly what we mean when we say Trump is against everything our union stands for.”
Labor unions have largely backed Harris for the 2024 presidential election, with only the American Federation of Labor taking a favorable stance toward the former president. No major labor union has endorsed Trump.
The UAW also Started advertising Last week, he blasted the Republican candidate as being against working people and disingenuous in his stance on working-class issues.
After the video was released, Trump campaign spokeswoman Carolyn Leavitt called Fain “a puppet of the Democratic Party who, unfortunately, is not serving the millions of hardworking union members across the country who support President Trump because they know he will protect their jobs and put them first.”
