President Joe Biden celebrates with United Auto Workers President Sean Fein after Fein and the UAW endorsed Biden for president at a Community Action Program legislative conference in Washington, Jan. 24, 2024.
Leah Millis | Reuters
The United Auto Workers union is endorsing President Joe Biden for re-election this year, UAW President Shawn Fain announced Wednesday at a union convention in Washington, DC.
“Today, I am proud to stand here with the International Executive Council and announce that the UAW is endorsing Joe Biden for President of the United States,” Fein said. “We will re-elect Joe Biden.”
The union’s endorsement of a Democratic presidential candidate should come as no surprise. But it comes after months of apparent resistance from Fein, who said politicians, including Biden, would have to win UAW endorsements.
“Look, I kept my promise to be the most pro-union president ever,” Biden said after the endorsement announcement. “Let me just say I’m honored to have your back and you mine. That’s the deal.”
It also comes after the New Hampshire primary in which former President Donald Trump defeated former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
“This November, we can stand up and elect someone who will stand by us and support our cause, or we can elect someone who will divide us and fight us at every turn,” Fein said before the endorsement. “That’s what this choice is.”
The endorsement is crucial for any candidate looking to secure the battleground state of Michigan because of the UAW’s potential influence there. The Detroit-based union has more than 400,000 active members and more than 580,000 retired members, many of whom reside in the state.
Endorsing Biden, Fein has been highly critical of his potential Republican opponent, at one point creating a slide show of “what Trump said and what he did to help American auto workers” during his first term. The slide was blank.
“He didn’t give a damn because he doesn’t care about the American worker,” Fein said. “Donald Trump stands against everything we stand for as a union, as a society.”
Biden threw his own punches at Trump, who he expects to face in a general election rematch in November.
“During the Trump administration, many administrations before that, what did they do? So many, so many people across America, lost their sense of pride,” he said. “Corporate America found the cheapest labor in the world and sent the jobs to those workers and sent the product back to us. But not anymore.”
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
From the first lines
Fain in May said the union would deny Biden a re-election endorsement until the UAW’s concerns about the auto industry’s transition to all-electric vehicles are addressed.
This message was heard loud and clear. In September, Biden became the first sitting US president to join an active UAW picket line, rallying with workers outside a General Motors spare parts installation. The visit came a week after Fein called on our supporters — “from our friends and families to the president of the United States” — to join the union’s protests against GM, Ford Motor and parent of Chrysler Stellandis.
Fain, on the picket line with Biden at GM’s Willow Run Distribution Center, called the moment “historic.”
The official re-election endorsement comes months after the union led strikes against Detroit automakers after the sides failed to reach new contracts covering about 150,000 auto workers.
The strikes, which lasted about six weeks, ended after each of the companies reached tentative agreements with the union in late October.
Fain said the agreements help the union’s “just transition” to electric vehicles, noting that workers at several battery cell plants will be included in the UAW’s national negotiations.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an auto-focused campaign rally at auto supplier Drake Enterprises on September 27, 2023 in Clinton Township, Michigan.
Michael Weiland / CNBC
Past UAW leaders have endorsed Biden to run against President Donald Trump in 2020. However, Trump especially won the support of many auto workers during his presidential campaigns.
Michigan voters helped both Biden and Trump win the White House during the last two presidential elections.
Trump, the front-runner among Republicans in the 2024 presidential race, hosted a rally at a Michigan plant of a non-union supplier the week of Biden’s visit.
Trump’s visit and rally, which focused heavily on the auto industry, drew criticism from the union and Fein, who has repeatedly said he believes another Trump presidency would be a “disaster.”
During the event, Trump repeatedly asked UAW members to encourage union leaders to support him.