United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain: "When we say Donald Trump is a scab, this is what we mean"
Jake Johnson for Common Dreams
The United Auto Workers announced Tuesday that it filed federal labor charges against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk after the former president heaped praise on the world's richest man for firing striking workers.
During
a rambling and lie-filled conversation
on X—the social media platform owned by Musk—Trump hailed the Tesla CEO as
"the greatest cutter."
"I
mean, I look at what you do. You walk in, you just say: 'You want to quit?'
They go on strike—I won't mention the name of the company—but they go on
strike," Trump said as Musk—who is backing the GOP nominee—laughed. "And
you say: 'That's okay, you're all gone.'"
The UAW argued Tuesday that Trump and Musk's remarks during the conversation, which was viewed live by more than a million people, amounted to "illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers who stand up for themselves by engaging in protected concerted activity, such as strikes."
"Under federal law, workers cannot be fired for going on strike, and threatening to do so is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act," the union said.
Listen
to Trump's comments:
Shawn
Fain, the UAW's president, said in a statement Tuesday that "when we say
Donald Trump is a scab, this is what we mean."
"When
we say Trump stands against everything our union stands for, this is what we
mean," Fain added. "Donald Trump will always side against workers
standing up for themselves, and he will always side with billionaires like Elon
Musk, who is contributing $45 million a month to a super PAC to get him
elected. Both Trump and Musk want working-class people to sit down and shut up,
and they laugh about it openly. It's disgusting, illegal, and totally
predictable from these two clowns."
Shortly
after taking over the social media platform formerly known as Twitter in 2022,
Musk terminated unionized custodial workers at the company's San Francisco
headquarters on the same day that
they launched an Unfair Labor Practice strike. Months later, Musk-led
Tesla fired dozens of workers at
its Buffalo, New York factory just a day after they announced plans to
unionize.
Musk, like Trump, has
a long history of hostility toward
labor unions, both in the U.S. and overseas—a similarity
that the pair bonded over during
the X conversation Monday night.
"Scab
recognize scab," the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the
U.S., wrote on X in
response to Trump's remarks on striking workers.
Chris
Brooks, a strategist for Fain, added that "when the mighty UAW
says DONALD TRUMP IS A SCAB, this is exactly what we mean."
"Listen
to Trump in his own words, laughing with anti-union billionaire Elon Musk about
how they both support firing workers who exercise their right to strike,"
Brooks added.
Both
the AFL-CIO and
the UAW have
endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala
Harris, warning that a
second Trump term would "would decimate workers' ability to organize; gut
health and safety protections; attack civil, labor, and consumer rights;
eviscerate retirement security; and undermine our ability to hold the wealthy
and corporations accountable."
Warren
Gunnels, staff director for Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.), wrote during the Trump-Musk
conversation that "the problem is not the dude from Guatemala picking
tomatoes for starvation wages," rejecting the pair's demonization of
immigrants.
"The
problem is billionaires like Trump and Musk who exploit workers, rip off the
American people, and make a fortune by being conmen," Gunnels added.
"The problem is corporate greed, boss. Trump and Musk are scabs."