Trump seeks support from striking UAW

LANSING, Mich. — When former president Donald Trump visits Detroit on Wednesday, he’ll be looking to blunt criticisms from a United Auto Workers union leadership that has said a second term for him would be a “disaster” for workers.

Trump will bypass the second Republican presidential debate to instead visit striking autoworkers in Michigan, where he has looked to position himself as an ally of blue-collar workers by promising to raise wages and protect jobs if elected to a second term.

But union leaders say Trump’s record in the White House speaks for itself. Union leaders have said his first term was far from worker-friendly, citing unfavorable rulings from the nation’s top labor board and the US Supreme Court, as well as unfulfilled promises of automotive jobs. While the United Auto Workers union has withheld an endorsement in the 2024 presidential race, its leadership has repeatedly rebuffed Trump.

Nevertheless, Trump plans to speak directly to a room of former and current union members. A Trump campaign radio ad released last week in Detroit and Toledo, Ohio, praised auto workers and said the former president has “always had their back.”

Not everyone thinks so. Despite Trump’s history of success in courting blue-collar workers in previous elections, union leaders say their members would do well to believe their own eyes.

“Just look who Trump put in the courts,” said Dave Green, the UAW regional director for Ohio and Indiana. “Look at his record with the labor relations board. He did nothing to support organized labor except lip service.”

Mark McManus, president of the plumbers and pipefitters union, said in a statement last week that Trump “tried to gut” the labor relations board under his administration “to undo the safeguards that protect working families.” Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber told the Associated Press in an emailed statement that the board was stacked with “antiworker appointees who trampled on collective bargaining rights.”