It was one of the most heated moments of the Democratic Party Convention. Last Monday evening Shawn FainPresident of the United Auto Workers union, walked onto the stage at the United Center, took off his blazer and revealed a red T-shirt that read, “Trump is a strikebreaker.”
The crowd, made up of party supporters wearing the same T-shirt, roared in agreement and began chanting, “Trump is a strikebreaker.” Fain, an electrician who worked at an auto parts factory in Indiana, is a throwback to the more tough archetype of union leaders. He cheered the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris as a “fighter for the working class” and impaled Trump as “lapdog of the billionaire class”.
But while Fain was reminiscent of the combative union bosses of an earlier era, behind that vintage style was a cutting-edge, tech-savvy campaign machine ready to capitalize on the situation. It wasn’t long before the digital foot soldiers of the Harris-Waltz team, along with the UAW, circulated the Fain video on social media, garnering millions of views, thousands of the bright red T-shirts being sold, and the word “strikebreaker” trending online.
This piece of choreographed theater reflected the Harris-Walz campaign’s methodical planning and preparation to use every opportunity to spread labor’s message and, just as importantly, to burnish their own pro-union stance with the union leaders they are aggressively courting. And for good reason—the union election could crucial in 2024.
Aware that Donald Trump’s strong showing among union families in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin may have cost Hillary Clinton the election in 2016, the Harris team is aware that the working class could turn out to be their version of suburban soccer moms this campaign season – a demographic that is crucial to victory.
“There are 2.7 million union members in the swing states,” wrote Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Harris and Walz’s campaign manager, in an Aug. 8 memo obtained by CBS News. “That means something when you consider that four years ago, about 45,000 votes in key states decided the election.”
Last week, Democratic convention planners overlooked no detail in courting unions. A record number — 20 percent — of Democratic delegates were union members; all delegation members from the 50 states and territories stayed in union hotels; nearly all of the physical work at the convention was done by union workers, from setting up the sets to the electrical and makeup for speakers and performers. And loud appeals to unions were strategically placed during many of the ceremonial roll calls.
The Harris campaign team sees close cooperation with the trade union movement as a force multiplier.
“We live in a fragmented media landscape and it’s very difficult to reach undecided voters,” said one campaign official. “Unions are the ultimate validator: They can cut through the noise and misinformation and present the facts about our record against Trump.”
Unions, once a key part of the Democratic Party, have split in the Trump era – with the former Republican president successful in pulling these traditional Democratic voters over the party line. Behind the scenes on the convention floor, it was clear that Harris’ campaign was trying to counter these gains with old-fashioned, hard-line tactics.
When another prominent union boss, Teamsters chairman Sean O’Brien, spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee late last month, he caught the attention of Democrats. O’Brien praised Trump as a “tough motherfucker” and said he “doesn’t care if he gets criticized” for being the first Teamsters boss to speak at a Republican convention in the Republicans’ 121-year history.
But two weeks later, Trump laughed with Elon Musk in a conversation on X about laying off employees. The Republican candidate praised Musk as “the biggest cut-throat worker” and told him, “Look at what you’re doing. You come in and say, ‘You want to quit?’ I won’t say the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, ‘You’re all gone!'”
O’Brien quickly tried to limit the damage, calling Trump’s comments “economic terrorism” in a statement to Politico. But Harris’ campaign and his union allies saw it as an opportunity for retaliation. The next day, Fain of the UAW filed a grievance. against Trump and Musk The National Labor Relations Board accuses them of unfair labor practices. The Harris campaign team was pleased and asked Fain to talk about her move on the radio, according to a source close to Fain.
O’Brien was desperate to get back into the good graces of the Democrats. He asked to speak at their convention, but the Harris campaign shut him out, a union source said. The campaign didn’t even respond to his request. Then, in a move apparently designed to undermine O’Brien, the Harris campaign invited several rank-and-file Teamsters members to attend the convention festivities without their leader.
One union source, who asked not to be identified to speak freely about the incident, called it “an affront.” Others said it was intended as a gentle message that there could be consequences for supporting Trump.
“They didn’t throw a ball at his head, but maybe a little bit inside to get him to take a step back,” said Eddie Vale, a political and union strategist who has represented unions such as the AFL-CIO. A source on Harris’ campaign team said only that it would have made no sense for O’Brien to speak at the convention, given his unwillingness to endorse Democrats.
And yet, at the end of the convention, Harris’ campaign officials said they were keeping the door open to a possible rapprochement with the Teamsters’ leadership. Harris accepted an invitation to meet with the union’s executive board, of which O’Brien is expected to serve, in what one union source called “virtue signaling.”
“Both sides want to make it clear that they are still in talks,” the source said.
Harris faces a greater challenge than her predecessor in winning union support. President Biden’s close relationship with unions came after years of cultivating his image as “Scranton Joe,” a politician whose middle-class roots helped him understand the plight and aspirations of workers. But Harris, a more cosmopolitan figure from California’s Bay Area, had to do more to establish herself as a natural ally of the working class.
In 2020, Biden won 57% of the union vote in key Rust Belt states, compared to just 40% for Trump. Harris will have to do at least as well as Biden to win this election, by most accounts.
Trump has also caught the attention of unions. In January, he attended the Teamsters Rank-and-File Presidential Roundtable (a few weeks later, Biden visited Teamsters headquarters) and heaped praise on the union, pointing out that many of his major projects were built with the help of Teamsters workers. And in a classic example of transactional politics, he promised to give union leaders a “seat at the table” if they supported him in the election.
The Harris team is strategic when it comes to recruiting workers. At last week’s convention, speakers seemed to take every opportunity to point out that Harris had worked at McDonald’s while in college, and the candidate herself mentioned it in her acceptance speech. Harris spoke sentimentally but tactically about the humble East Bay neighborhood where she grew up, calling it “a beautiful working-class neighborhood of firefighters, nurses and construction workers.”
And almost as soon as Harris presumed candidate Last month, she sent her campaign team on a tour of swing states, meeting with union members, including UAW workers in Detroit. The campaign team has highlighted Harris’s pro-union record, pointing out that she walked on picket lines with union strikers during her first presidential campaign in 2019 and that as vice president she broke the Senate tie vote that allowed passage of the Butch Lewis Act, which restored pensions to more than a million workers.
Then there was Harris’s choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. His outspoken Midwestern style, football coaching demeanor and worn flannel shirts appeal to voters who can’t make anything up. A Harris campaign official said it was no coincidence that Walz’s first solo campaign trip was to mobilize members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees at its international convention in Los Angeles. And importantly, Walz, a former high school teacher, is himself a registered union member of one union – the American Federation of Teachers.
Ultimately, workers will likely follow the candidate they believe can best address working-class economic concerns. Harris will almost certainly win the blue-collar vote, but what really matters is Trump’s ability to narrow her lead by appealing to the working class on issues like immigration and trade.
Robert Forrant, a historian of the American labor movement, says Harris’ campaign team is aware of this and is making economic concerns part of their message.
“They’ve started talking about how inflation really matters, and you can’t pretend it doesn’t matter.” But he said the Harris campaign needs to do more, such as acknowledging that working people are increasingly having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, a reality that has third-party effects, including the destruction of family structures. “You have to walk a fine line when you’re appealing to union voters,” Forrant said.
