The GOP’s “Corporate Agenda Masquerading as Working Class”

Brandon Mancilla

You have to remember that for a while our union was led by leaders who had no interest in actually fighting for the membership. Many of them ended up in prison. Many of them had to be kicked out of the union. We’re under federal monitorship now. Since then, we’ve had one member, one vote, and the election of Shawn Fain, and we took on the stand-up strike and struck the three auto companies, the Big Three, at the same time last year.

At this point, we have dramatically changed our union to become an incredibly progressive, democratic force in this country. We want to organize the South. We won at Volkswagen. We’re turning it around right now. As part of that comes the articulation of a progressive working-class agenda, a political program that’s advancing not just our members’ interests but the union movement as a whole and also the working class as a whole, the unorganized working class.

At the same time, we’ve seen decades of job losses, plant closures, concessionary contracts. As a rank-and-file member, you can imagine if you’re seeing your union leadership not fight for you, not organized well, agreeing to concessionary contracts, not fighting back against plant closures, and they’re still hand in hand with the Democratic Party that also is not advancing an agenda to directly confront those political economic problems, then you are going to be looking for an alternative. That’s what that 30 percent is about. It’s a 30 percent rooted in finding some other culprit for the issues that are facing them, whether it’s China, whether it’s Mexico, whether it’s trade policies. And honestly, in a lot of ways, those moves wouldn’t be wrong. The Democrats did champion free trade policies that did immiserate their working conditions and lead to record job losses. Now we’re starting to turn that around, but it’s…