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Unions Denounce UAW for Backing Trump Tariffs
While both the Steelworkers and Machinists have denounced the Trump tariffs, one of the few unions that has backed the tariffs is the UAW, which has no significant union membership in Canada.
When Trump announced the tariffs on April 2nd, the UAW communication team invited reporters to a background call to help push the tariffs.
“The press backgrounder will not be for attribution but will serve as an opportunity to provide additional background for reporting on the auto tariffs,” the UAW wrote in an email that was sent to Payday Report.
(Given that the UAW would not allow us to record the call, Payday refused to attend the briefing that appeared to be coordinated with the White House).
Publicly, the Trump Administration has touted support from Shawn Fain in attempting to build public support for the tariffs. UAW’s Shawn Fain has done a high profile media tour on the major circuits.
"Tariffs are a tool in the toolbox to get these companies to do the right thing, and the intent behind it is to bring jobs back here, and, you know, invest in the American workers,” Fain said on CBS Face the Nation this Sunday.
The tariffs have already resulted in the shuttering of unionized Stellantis plants in both Mexico and Canada; plants run by unions, which had previously been allied with the UAW.
Now, labor leaders are calling out Fain.
“To see UAW leadership talking about the importance of jobs coming back to the U.S., knowing that Canadian auto workers will be massively impacted, is a betrayal of the solidarity we had as auto unions,” John D’Agnolo, president of Unifor Local 200 which represents 2,000 auto workers at Ford in Windsor, Ontario told the Globe and Mail.
However, the auto plant closures aren’t just affecting Canadian and Mexican auto workers, but have resulted in the closure of some US plants.
Already, Stellantis has announced that they will lay off 900 auto workers at 5 different plants that previously provided auto parts to Canadian and Mexican plants.
“When you see American auto workers supporting this, you have to ask: are they going to really feel this way when the entire industry ultimately shuts down and the job losses hit them hard and fast? Because that will happen,” James Stewart, president of Unifor Local 444, which represents 4,000 employees at the Stellantis factory in Windsor, Ontario told The Globe and Mail.
For more, check out The Globe and Mail.
ICE Arrests 37 Workers at Mt. Baker Roofing Company
During the Biden Administration, ICE refused to conduct workplace raids. Now, ICE is once again targeting workplaces.
Last week, 37 workers were arrested at Mt. Baker Roofing in Washington State in the first large-scale raid of the Trump Administration. The owners of Mt. Baker Roofing denounced the raid.
“Many of those impacted have worked for us, as taxpaying employees, for years, if not decades. These hardworking individuals were actively supporting our community by helping to build the homes and install the roofs that protect us all from the elements,” the company said in a statement.
For more, check out The Seattle Times.
SMART Union Protests Supreme Court Refusal to Bring Back Illegally Deported Immigrant
Earlier today, the Supreme Court decided to temporarily stay a federal judge’s order that would force the United States to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. His deportation provoked outraged from his union SMART since he was legally allowed to work and reside in the United States and illegally deported to El Salvador.
“The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable,” SMART Union President Michael Coleman said in a statement.
For more, read SMART’s full statement here.
Steph Curry Busts Union
From 2016 to 2019, Golden State Warriors superstar Steph Curry served as Vice President of the National Basketball Players’ Association. However, now, he is playing hardball in demanding that his construction project be built non-union.
Steph Curry’s company Thirty Ink was slated to build a new headquarters in downtown San Francisco to house 8 different businesses owned by the basketball superstar.
However, now that the Carpenters' union is insisting that the project be done 100% union, Curry’s company is saying it won’t build the headquarters.
“Our dream of building a new Thirty Ink HQ at 600 20th Street has been destroyed by the [Nor Cal Carpenters Union],” a company spokesperson told the San Francisco Standard.
For more, check out the San Francisco Standard.
Mon Valley Unemployed Committee Gets Profile in The Nation
For decades, Mon Valley Unemployed Committee co-founder Barney Oursler has been a hero, where I grew up in Pittsburgh. Now, he has been profiled by The Nation:
As Barney Oursler drives past the steelworks along Pittsburgh’s Monongahela River, he feels a wave of a familiar emotion—sadness. “I worked in one of those,” he says. “I met people over the 1970s and 1980s whose lives depended on those workplaces and who assumed that that was going to be their life.”
Oursler, who is leading me on a tour of the area’s mills, cofounded and directs the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee, a nonprofit originally established to help the people whose lives were upended by the shuttered factories and abandoned warehouses we’ve been passing in the car. Since 1983, the nonprofit has helped people across Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania navigate the unemployment system; in the process, Oursler and his staff have witnessed firsthand the region’s shifting economic landscape.
Like other parts of the Rust Belt, in the late 1970s and the 1980s the Pittsburgh area experienced the devastating effects of the worldwide steel crisis, losing 133,000 manufacturing jobs between 1979 and 1987. In 1983, the situation was particularly dire: the unemployment rate in the metropolitan area climbed to 17.1 percent, with some counties surpassing 20 percent. One county, at 27.1 percent, exceeded the country’s highest unemployment rate during the Great Depression.
Oursler slows down near the former location of Homestead Steel Works, once one of the largest steel mills in the country. Not only was it the site of the famous and bloody 1892 Homestead Strike, Oursler tells me, it was also a locus of organizing during the economic downturn. In the early 1980s, Local 1397 fought against the United Steelworkers’ international leadership for making concessions to steel companies, led by a radically democratic Rank and File Caucus.
For more, check out The Nation.
News & Headlines Elsewhere
- Detroit-area Stellantis workers brace for more layoffs after tariffs: 'They're terrified'
- Pro-labor Republicans push Trump to rescind order busting most federal unions
- Silicon Valley transit union files appeal against judge mandating end of the strike
- Alabama becomes 39th state to offer state employees, teachers paid parental leave
- Five years of remote work changed workplace accessibility. Employees with disabilities will feel its loss.
- Labor secretary slashes international solidarity grants
- K-12 schools must sign certification against DEI to receive federal money, administration says
- Finally, The director of the Oscar-nominated film 'Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat' reflects on imperial violence, corporate warfare, and how cinema can disrupt the official record—and help us remember differently.
We’ll be back tomorrow folks. Keep sending links and story ideas to melk@paydayreport.com
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See yinz tomorrow,
Melk
