In anticipation of Donald Trump’s address to workers at an auto parts factory Wednesday night — which the former president is using to steal oxygen from the GOP debate — there have been some … questionable takes published on a supposed shift in the Republican Party’s interest in supporting union workers’ rights.
From the Freep earlier.
One day after President Joe Biden joined the United Auto Workers picket line in Belleville, former President Donald Trump is coming to the state today to address around 500 people about the UAW strike at 8 p.m. at Drake Enterprises in Clinton Township. As of Wednesday, the event was not listed as a public one on his campaign website.
My emphasis.
Many eons ago, I worked with a VA clinic in Detroit, at Wayne State. Detroit was a “shithole country” back then, in the words of one hideous person. It was depressed, crime ridden, and in total decay. The backbone of that city, the auto workers, had been decimated by Nixon, Ford, and then Reagan. Even though I grew up in Philly, in a union family, I never realized how central unions were to so many parts of the economy until I spent 2 years in Detroit. Build back better requires strong unions.
“Trump won about four in 10 votes from union households in 2020…”
That 40% of unionized voters can prioritize “He hates the same people I do!” over their own desperate struggle to survive economically is stunning proof that stupidity remains the greatest existential threat to humanity.
So is the convicted rapist going to attend a women’s rights meeting next?
There’s just one problem: The factory, Drake Enterprises, is a nonunion shop.
And this surprises exactly not one single person…
Hi. Yeah. We need a whole bunch of grinning fuck-sticks in hardhats, preferably between an airfield and a Wendy’s.
It’s not just stupidity that will kill off humanity, but greed and selfishness. It’s easy for the corporate plutocrats to turn workers against each other over crumbs.
I wonder if that number includes unionized law enforcement.
autoworkers are “being sold down the river by their leadership.”
By that I assume he means Management and Ownership, right?
Absolutely, and yet the right wing persists in perpetuating the myth that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working classes. We can’t let them get away with that.
In 1971 President Nixon withdrew from FDR’s Bretton Wood Agreement and its system of capital controls, enabling the investor class to abandon the domestic workforce and invest heavily overseas, to the detriment of organized labor.
Reagan then consolidated the gains of the investor class with regressive tax policies, and Bush negotiated NAFTA.
A few years ago NAFTA was amended, and then-House Speaker Pelosi took the draft that Trump submitted to Congress for ratification and then rewrote entire passages that dealt with enforcement of labor rights.
It is because of those changes made by Speaker Pelosi, borrowed from the aborted Trans-Pacific Partnership initiative axed by Trump immediately upon taking office, that we were able to deploy trade auditors and send inspectors down to Mexico a couple years later and blow the whistle on a corrupt labor union conspiring with foreign automakers to suppress wages and maintain an unfair and uneven playing field that undercut American workers.
My thoughts on outsourcing, international trade agreements and the fraught relationship between the Democratic Party and the white working class can be found here:
Racism is a helluva drug.
Verbal diarrhea. Sounds about right, actually.
Of course he’s addressing scabs!
The Detroit Free Press bit on Trump’s visit fails to note that Drake is a non-union shop.
If it didn’t surprise the NYT, ABC, NPR, the WSJ, etc etc, that’s because they gave no sign of knowing it in the first place. Credit where due: the Times at least has updated and corrected its story.
And that their bosses making 500 times more than they do are Republicans has no influence on their thought processes. Spite trumps everything.
True fraking dat. President Johnson’s theory of Racial Politics on steroids.
News lady on radio today said “trump is speaking to striking auto union workers today”. No, he wasn’t.
That’s a brilliant piece. Tightly constructed, emotionally moving, focused…
You are one hell of a story-teller, telling a true and important story. I hope our Speaker Emerita has read it. She deserves to.