Op-Ed by Andrew Grossman
Shawn Fain, President of the United Auto Workers, spoke on the first night of the Democratic National Convention while wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of the UAW above the slogan “Trump Is a Scab, Vote Harris”. He said: “On one side, we have Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, who have stood shoulder to shoulder with the working class. On the other side, we have Trump and Vance, two lapdogs for the billionaire class who only serve themselves […] Kamala Harris is one of us. She’s a fighter for the working class. And Donald Trump is a scab!”
No, Donald Trump is not a scab. A scab is a worker who crosses a picket line during a strike, who betrays his fellow workers by working during the strike and, like a scab on a wound, stops the draining of blood caused by the strike’s blows against the company. What is Trump, really? He is a real estate capitalist turned entertainer turned politician, head crook of the Republican mafia. He cannot cross a picket line; he’s the one who gets picketed. The idea, if it is to make any sense at all, is that voting for Trump is scabbing and voting for Harris is holding the picket line.
But Harris, like Trump, is no worker. She is the self-described “Top Cop”; the cops are the ones who bust up workers’ pickets if they step out of line and actually challenge scabs. She’s even bragging now about being tough on immigration, so she’s a Top Border Cop, too.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for her part, called Trump a “two-bit union-buster” during her DNC speech, which is a bit closer to the truth. But what is Harris if not the same? The Biden administration—with the support of AOC herself—shut down the rail workers’ national struggle in 2022, blocking their strike, and forcing a federally-mediated contract down the rail workers’ throats. The quality of life promises made to the rail workers are now being hacked away because of “labor shortages”, according to the rail monopolies doing the hacking.
Like the Teamsters President Sean O’Brien’s populist rhetoric at the Republican National Convention, AOC and Fain’s rhetoric is a symptom of the deepening general crisis of imperialism. The ruling mafias must resort to populism to lend some legitimacy to their electoral farce. Both mafias see the consistent polling results, that young people especially are more and more in favor of unions and of striking. They must appeal to the anger of the workers who are facing the crushing grip of rising prices for rent, childcare, food, etc., from one end and the lowering of wages and mass layoffs from the other. The Republicans have known for some time that the “kitchen table” issues are a strength in the electoral farce, and the Democrats are trying to step up here as well.
Shawn Fain is positioned by the monopoly media as the opposite of Sean O’Brien, though they are both “labor reform” leaders brought to power in their respective unions against the corrupt old bureaucracy by the Democratic Socialists of America and their Democratic masters, thus forming a fresh, new corrupt bureaucracy. O’Brien used reactionary, national-chauvinist dog whistles in his speech at the Republican National Convention—saying America “belongs” to the workers while the “ruling elites” have no country, blaming the crisis on the foreigner, calling for protectionist trade tariffs, and echoing JD Vance’s empty talk about the “DC elites” and making it easier for immigrants to enter the country “on our terms”—meaning we let in the “good ones”.
Fain uses the same dog whistles, just tailored for his chosen audience, for instance in his condemnations of Stellantis for their layoffs—with their foreign CEO ruining a great American company!—while praising GM and Ford, as if we can have some monopolies which are good for workers. All this adds up to throwing sand in the workers’ eyes, trying to conceal the class struggle, to conceal the real answer to the critical question: “Who are our friends, and who are our enemies”.
The two genocidal mafias have their differences in rhetoric, and that is what they run with in their electoral farce where policy takes second fiddle to showmanship. “Trump is a scab” is not a brave, militant workers’ slogan. It is a deceit. And this deceit runs right down to their management of the picket line, where workers are allowed to say what they want about a scab but can’t take any action against them.
Since rising to power, both Fain and O’Brien have sold out their union memberships with falsified strikes and sell-out contracts. The proof is in the pudding—in the layoffs hitting UAW workers at John Deere and at Stellantis, and at the layoffs hitting the Teamsters at UPS, none of which the bureaucrats are fighting against.
At the DNC, Fain accused Trump of doing nothing to stop the shut down of the auto plant in Lordstown, Ohio in 2019 and lying about bringing back auto jobs. Meanwhile, he turns a blind eye when the same happens under the Democrats’ watch in Warren.
And when the workers insist on fighting and Fain can’t prevent the struggle, what then? What was the meaning of the “Stand Up” strike against the Big Three auto manufacturers that propelled Fain to fame and into the Democrats’ willing arms? The workers wanted to fight and they were held back from unleashing their collective might; it was a partial strike. The workers were kept on the job, preserving the companies’ profits, and so they were dealt a false victory by the bureaucrats and management of the Big Three, all in collusion with the so-called most pro-labor President in history, Joe Biden. The UAW forced a sell-out contract on its rank-and-file under Trump’s presidency, and they forced another sell-out contract under Biden’s: the score is one and one.
The positive thing is that this hypocritical activity by the ruling class puppets means they are scared—they are scared of the masses’ explosiveness, on display for instance in the auto workers breaking the anti-union seal of the South by unionizing at Volkswagen—the VW workers chalked up their victory to rank-and-file energy and the bureaucrats taking a back seat, in contrast to previous attempts. They are scared that with the developing crisis, the workers will do more than just call a scab a scab, and will also do something about it, rejecting the electoral farce and its showmen, and instead fighting for their rights.
