UAW president: ‘Deplorable’ that Trump stripped union rights for federal workers
United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain said it is “deplorable” that President Trump moved to strip union rights from federal workers.
Fain joined CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, just after Trump signed an executive order limiting numerous federal agency employees from unionizing and telling the government it can’t participate in collective bargaining.
The UAW president celebrated Trump’s recent tariffs on car imports, noting that it would bring manufacturing and jobs back to the U.S. Fain’s embrace of Trump’s idea came just months after he campaigned against the president and worked with the Democratic Party on his striking workers’ picket line.
He was asked Sunday by host Major Garrett about what he finds more important, a president who walked the picket line or one who imposes tariffs.
“It’s both,” he said, noting that he supports a president that “supports organized labor and supports good working conditions.”
“While we applaud the shift with tariffs here under this administration, again, it’s deplorable what happened last night with the stroke of a marker, stripping away bargaining, stripping away contractual rights for hundreds of thousands of union workers, attacking the free speech of union workers,” Fain continued. “And we can’t stand for that.”
Trump’s order sought to disband unions at agencies that have a national security mission, though many of the departments don’t have a national security connection.
It targets agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the General Services Administration and many more.
"Look, as I said, when we find something we agree with someone on that we can work with them on, we're going to work with them. But, but again, the list is very long, of things we don't agree on," Fain said of the administration.