On the eve of the mass “No Kings” protests against the aspiring dictator Donald Trump, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain issued another tribute to the fascist in the White House, hailing the announcement by Stellantis that it will shift more production from Canada to the US because of Trump’s tariffs.
On Tuesday, Stellantis said it was scrapping plans to reopen its plant in Brampton, Ontario, where 3,000 were laid off when the plant was closed in 2024. Instead of building the new Jeep Compass in Brampton, the company is moving production of the model to its factory in Belvidere, Illinois. The decision, part of a planned investment of $13 billion over four years at US plants, followed “very productive talks with the Trump administration,” Stellantis Antonio Filosa said.
In a statement posted on the UAW website, Fain declared, “A year ago, Stellantis was on a fast-track to moving their US operations out of the country. Their decision today proves that targeted auto tariffs can, in fact, bring back thousands of good union jobs to the US.” He continued, “Wall Street and supposed industry experts said this was impossible. But race to the bottom created by free trade is finally coming to an end.”
Fain is functioning as a scab, gloating over the destruction of the jobs of workers in Canada to secure an additional flow of dues to the bloated coffers of the UAW apparatus.
Denouncing Fain’s statement, Mack Trucks autoworker and leading member of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) Will Lehman said the following:
Rank-and-file workers must reject the lie by UAW President Shawn Fain that cutting the jobs of our Canadian brothers and sisters is a win for American workers. An attack on workers anywhere is an attack on workers everywhere. We need to back the workers in Brampton and not allow Stellantis and the UAW to divide and conquer us.
Far from ending the “race to the bottom,” the UAW is helping the corporations unleash a new wave of international whipsawing with workers pitted against each other in a fratricidal struggle over a dwindling number of jobs. There is no doubt Fain & Co. have already promised Stellantis further job and cost-cutting.
No one should be fooled by the UAW bureaucracy’s claims it is “bringing back jobs.” This is the same UAW leadership that said the 2023 sellouts at the Big Three and Mack Trucks were “historic contracts.” Instead they were stabs in the back that led to the firing of thousands of part-time workers, spreading layoffs and speedup that led to the deaths of Stellantis workers Ronald Adams Sr. and Antonio Gaston. For Trump and his stooges in the union bureaucracy, “Make America Great Again” means making the factories sweatshops again and workers industrial slaves again.
Fain is allied with a fascist president who sends ICE thugs against immigrant workers, threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act to establish military rule and illegalize all opposition, and is destroying public education, health care and other core social and democratic rights in order to hand more money to the oligarchy he represents. And, like the run up to World War II, trade war today is the prelude to a new world war for global domination, spanning from the Middle East and South America to Russia and China. By backing the hated Trump administration, Fain is auditioning for a position on the White House’s war council.
Our greatest strength is our international unity. The only way to defend our jobs and win back what we lost is through cross border solidarity in struggle. This means joining hands with our brother and sisters in Canada, Mexico and around the world against the global auto giants. In every factory and workplace, workers must build rank-and-file committees, controlled democratically by workers themselves to discuss a collective strategy to fight. This can only be successful if it is independent of the UAW bureaucracy and the two parties of big business, which have nothing offer except poverty, war and dictatorship.
The timing of the UAW’s pro-Trump statement is not accidental. It comes as opposition to the fascist president and the capitulation of his Democratic Party enablers is intensifying. Frightened and opposed to this growing movement, the UAW has boycotted the mass anti-Trump “No Kings” protests this weekend, doing nothing to publicize, let alone mobilize support for the nationwide demonstrations.
By lining up with Trump, who regularly threatens to make Canada the 51st US state, the UAW is continuing the same bankrupt, nationalist, pro-management program it has pursued for decades.
Far from defending jobs, all the UAW’s “Buy American” campaigns and demonization of foreign autoworkers has produced one disaster after another. The UAW admits 65 Big Three plants have closed over the last 20 years.
The real source of this job slaughter was not “unfair trade,” as Fain claims. It is capitalism, a system that the subordinates basic human needs to private profit, and a system the UAW bureaucracy fully supports.
Even though UAW membership has fallen from 1.5 million in 1970 to around 400,000 today, the assets of the union apparatus has risen to over $1 billion. Fain, who pockets $275,000 a year in a reported salary, heads an army of functionaries who rising income is directly proportional to the worsening of the living standards and working conditions of the workers they falsely claim to represent.
The claim that jobs can be protected by building a tariff wall is a lie. There is no such thing as an “American,” “Canadian” or any other national car. The auto industry is globally integrated and every vehicle is the product of the collective, interconnected labor of workers around the world and made up of components that criss-cross borders many times.
Fain spits on the historic ties of the American and Canadian working class. US autoworkers should recall the heroic joint battles US and Canadian autoworkers wage to found the United Auto Workers in the 1930s. This included the wave of sit-down strikes that spanned both sides of the US-Canada border, including the 17-day sit down strike by workers at the Oshawa, Ontario General Motors plant in 1937, inspired by the Flint sit-down. Ontario government officials denounced the UAW as “foreign” agitators.
The 1985 split between the US and Canadian regions of the UAW proved disastrous for workers on both sides of the Detroit River separating Michigan and Ontario. The result of this fratricidal divorce has been hundreds of thousands of jobs lost, wages gutted and hard won rights surrendered.
Once again, the global corporations and their political representatives are trying to force the working class to pay for the deepening economic crisis and recession. Just this week, Nestlé announcing 16,000 global layoffs and Amazon preparing to use artificial intelligence to slash thousands of jobs. German automakers and parts suppliers are slashing 10s of thousands of jobs in a massive shakeout.
“To fight the global onslaught on jobs and living standards, workers need an international strategy and organization for their struggles,” Lehman said.
He continued:
That is why the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) unite workers in the US, Canada, Mexico and around the world to defend the right to a secure and good-paying job for every worker. The advances in technology like AI, robotics and EVs must be used to shorten the workweek with no loss of pay, not throw workers out of their jobs.
The IWA-RFC is fighting to build rank-and-file committees in every factory to abolish the union apparatus and transfer power to the workers on the shop floor.
Autoworkers should join the mass protests on October 18 and fight for the building of rank-and-file committees to unite workers internationally against job cuts, deadly working conditions and capitalist exploitation and combine this with the fight against Trump’s dictatorship and war. The watchword of the working class must be, “Workers of the world, unite!”
To join the fight for rank-and-file committees, fill out the form below.