‘TRUMP IS A SCAB’ PROCLAIM UNION LEADERS AT DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONVENTION
Labor unions were very visible on the first night of the Democratic convention Aug. 19 with the leaders of over a half-dozen unions representing millions of workers took the floor to express their support for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in this year’s elections.
United Auto Workers union president Shaw Fain speaks to the Democratic National Convention on August 19. AFP via Getty Images)
Particularly notable was the speech by United Auto Workers president Sean Fain who recalled President Biden’s support of the auto worker’s recent strike and his appearance on their picket line. Auto workers remember that during their strike, Trump was addressing a rally called by a non-union auto shop on company time where workers were mandated to attend, and condemned the strike and the UAW. The strike meanwhile gained for workers at the Big Three automakers a record contract with gains they haven’t seen in decades.
Fain also pointed to the time when Harris, as a U.S. Senator, joined a UAW pocket line in a previous strike. “For us in the labor movement, it’s real simple.” he said. “Kamala Harris is one of us, she’s a fighter for the working class, and Trump is a scab.” While they pose as friends of workers, he and his VP nominee JD Vance are “lap dogs for the billionaire class who only serve themselves.”
And then, in an act of showmanship that drew a roar and enthusiastic applause from the crowd, he said “It’s getting hot in here,” and took off his jacket revealing a red t-shirt with the large inscription, “Trump is a scab.”
“The American working class,” he declared, “is in a fight for our lives.”
“We are going to build a younger, darker, hipper, fresher, sneaker-wearing labor movement,” said Service Employees International Union president April Verrett, whose union represents nearly two million workers. “A movement that is going to be more inclusive and built for the middle class, and we are going to end poverty-wage work once and for all,” she said, to loud approval from theDemocratic Party delegates.
In her speech to the delegates on the same night, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed the former president as a “two-bit union buster.”
