President Biden will appear with the president of the United Automobile Workers union at a conference in Washington on Wednesday as he tries to win the group's influential endorsement.
Biden, who appeared on a picket line with striking union workers in the fall, is expected to deliver a keynote speech at the conference and “address attendees on the major issues facing working-class Americans,” according to a notice of press. For the event.
The group's president, Shawn Fain, has been an outspoken critic of former President Donald J. Trump and criticized some Republican policies as divisive and harmful when he spoke at Monday's conference. He said the party takes stances against transgender and gay people “so they don't have to talk about who you work for, where the profits go and who benefits.” He also criticized Republican lines of attack on immigration to the United States.
“Right now, millions of people are being told that the biggest threat to their livelihoods is immigrants crossing the border,” Fain said. “The threat we face at the border does not come from migrants. “It's from the billionaires and politicians who get workers to point fingers at each other.”
Still, Fain has not said whether the UAW will officially endorse Biden. Representatives from the union and Biden's campaign had no comment Wednesday on whether the endorsement would come. Biden, who calls himself “the most pro-union president in history” and was the first sitting president to visit a picket line, has appeared at several UAW events to demonstrate his good faith with the group's leadership and rank and file.
“I've been involved in the UAW longer than you've been alive,” Biden, then 80, told the boisterous crowd at an event in Illinois in November, after the union reached a deal with Ford. General Motors and Stellantis. in a contract that included wage increases and reopened a plant in Belvidere, Illinois.
At that event, he criticized Trump for insisting that electric vehicles would lead to the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs.
“Well, like almost everything he said, he's wrong,” Biden said at the time. And you've proven him wrong. Instead of lower wages, they made record profits. Instead of fewer jobs, we got a commitment for thousands more jobs.”
