The United Auto Workers union is endorsing Democrat Joe Biden for President.
Arguing that the nation needs stable leadership with less acrimony “and more balance to the rights and protections of working Americans,” the roughly 400,000-member union have announced they are endorsing Democrat Joe Biden for President.
According to reporting from the Associated Press, the union says Biden has committed to reining in corporate power over workers, encouraging collective bargaining, and making sure workers get the pay, benefits and protections they deserve. Biden also has committed to expand access to affordable health care, the union said. The union added it chose to endorse Biden because of his experience under the Obama administration during the 2009 auto bailout and “anti-worker federal appointees” by the Trump administration.
The union represents about 150,000 workers with Detroit’s three automakers. But its membership also includes factory workers in other industries as well as nurses, casino workers, and university graduate assistants.
The Trump response
The Trump campaign, in an email response to the UAW’s endorsement, said that while Biden “may have the support of union leaders,” per CNBC. The “workers know that it was under President Trump’s leadership that jobs increased and wages grew.”
“Workers will be reminded that Biden voted for NAFTA and shipped hundreds of thousand[s] of jobs overseas,” the Trump campaign said. “And they know President Trump always puts America first, that his policies built the greatest economy in history before it was artificially interrupted, and that he is the only one who can restore us to that position again.”
Trump has not fulfilled campaign promises of auto manufacturing and jobs returning from Mexico. Most notably, Trump told a crowd at a rally in Ohio in 2017 that jobs were “all coming back.” Two years later, General Motors shut down its massive Lordstown assembly plant in the state.