ALLENTOWN, Pa. - United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain visited the Lehigh Valley on Sunday to rally union members for Democrats in the final weeks before Election Day.
Fain is the latest in a parade of national figures traveling through the Lehigh Valley as campaigns do everything they can to pick up votes in an election battleground.
This region could be critical in determining who wins Pennsylvania and eventually the White House — and is also home to one of the nation’s most competitive U.S. House races in the 7th Congressional District.
Besides unionized auto workers, filling the UAW Local 677 union hall off Mack Boulevard were members of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, the Laborers’ International Union of North America and other unions.
Arguably, the main event of Sunday's rally came when five or six dozen people fanned out across the Allentown to knock on doors in hopes of trying to win Democrats a few more votes.
But first, Fain made his case for supporting the party’s candidates up and down the ballot.
“The rich and their puppets have employed the oldest tactic in the book, and that's divide and conquer the masses.”Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers union
In addition to Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket, he focused attention on incumbent U.S. Rep. Susan Wild’s re-election campaign and Stefanie Rafes’s bid for Pennsylvania's 187th House District in a battle against former Republican state representative Gary Day.
Along with praising Democrats broadly, Fain commended Harris for visiting a UAW picket line in 2019. He castigated Republicans as anti-union and anti-working-class.
“It's always a party line vote when something benefits labor, and we know who the hell doesn't stand with labor,” he said. “We know the wealthy can always bank on Republicans to do their bidding for them every time.”
Reaching beyond more typical labor issues, Fain urged the audience to reject Republican claims that immigration is the root of the nation’s ills. He simultaneously cast the political races as chiefly a class struggle, with Democrats on the side of the working class and Republicans as the party of the wealthy.
“The rich and their puppets have employed the oldest tactic in the book, and that's divide and conquer the masses,” he said. “They want to put a face of anyone not white or not from America as a reason why your life sucks right now, because they don't want you knowing that it's them that are causing a problem.”
Wild takes the stage
In touting her pro-labor credentials, Wild, D-Lehigh Valley, reminded the crowd of a recent federal grant to Mack Trucks, which employs UAW members.
The grant, to help the Allentown-area factory start building electric trucks, was funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, one of the Biden-era Democratic Party’s marquee pieces of legislation.
Wild also recounted some of her experiences on the House Education and Labor Committee, arguing that Republicans in Congress threaten workers’ right to organize.
“All of the hearings that have revolved around labor have revolved around needing to make sure that labor unions aren't taking advantage of management.”U.S. Rep. Susan Wild, D-Lehigh Valley
With Republicans in the majority and in control of the committee’s agenda, Wild said, “all of the hearings that have revolved around labor have revolved around needing to make sure that labor unions aren't taking advantage of management,” drawing laughter.
Fain praised Wild for fighting to “raise wages and protect pensions,” and for working to include a review process into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that replaced NAFTA.
At the same time, Fain described Wild's challenger, state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, as showing “nothing but disdain for working-class people.”
Wild criticized Mackenzie’s “staunchly anti-worker and anti-union rhetoric.”
A representative for the Mackenzie campaign did not respond to a request for comment Sunday.
Organized labor groups have not uniformly backed Democrats this cycle. The Teamsters, one of the largest unions in the U.S., declined to endorse either Harris or former President Donald Trump earlier this year in the race for the presidency.
Internal UAW polling shows roughly 65% of members support Democrats, said Fain, with the party’s support rising among members in recent weeks.
