'What an insult to the men and women in the auto industry'
By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
Donald Trump regularly rips UAW President Shawn Fain while professing his undying love for blue collar rank-and-filers.
But at a gathering of the conservative, business-friendly Economic Club of Chicago Tuesday, the ex-president who wants his old job back nuked assembly line workers, telling an interviewer that they don’t really built cars.
“What an insult to the men and women in the auto industry who give their blood, sweat and bodies to build vehicles for the American public,” said Kirk Gillenwaters, a retired member of Louisville UAW Local 862 who worked at Ford’s Derby City assembly plant for 30 years.
Said Trump: “Mercedes-Benz will start building in the United States, and they have a little bit. But do you know what they really are? Assembly, like in South Carolina. But they build everything in Germany and then they assemble it here. They get away with murder because they say, ‘Oh yes, we’re building cars.’ They don’t build cars. They take ’em out of a box, and they assemble ’em. We could have our child do it.”
The weird syntax was typically Trumpian, but his blast at workers was jarring. Ever the conman, Trump--"an unhinged serial union buster who betrays working people," according to AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler--usually trots out the divide-and-conquer scam. He charges that while union “bosses” like Fain only care about money and power for themselves, while claiming the mantle of blue collar champion.
Anyway, Mercedes-Benz, which operates union plants back home, runs a pair of non-union stateside plants in South Carolina and Alabama, both “right to work” states. Trump is a RTW fan.
In April, the UAW won an historic organizing drive at a Volkswagen factory at Chattanooga in RTW Tennessee. But in May, the union came up short at the Mercedes-Benz facility in Alabama. “This is probably the most strategic and organized union busting campaign in decades,” a pro-union plant worker told In These Times columnist Sara Jaffe.
Gillenwaters, president of the Kentucky Alliance for Retired Americans, also wonders what Trump meant by, “We could have our child do it.”
“Is he insinuating that he wants to have children working in manufacturing facilities?” asked Gillenwaters, who recalled that in the last session of the Kentucky legislature, Republicans backed a bill to loosen the state’s longstanding child labor laws. GOP governors and lawmakers in other states are pushing similar measures.
The UAW hit back at Trump on Instagram, posting, "Donald Trump just insulted every American autoworker" and asking UAW members, 'Do you think Donald Trump could do your job?'"
The post invited responses "by Thurs. 10/17 at 9 PM EST and you could be featured in a special video release: uaw.us/RespondtoTrump."