Shawn Fain: “Solidarity Doesn’t Stop at the Border”
United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain lays out the union’s vision for rewriting trade rules, raising wages across North America, and challenging the race to the bottom.
Shawn Fain and the UAW believe every worker deserves dignity, safety, and the right to organize. (Win McNamee / Getty Images)
Bhaskar Sunkara
What is the UAW’s stance on immigration? What policies do you think the United States should pursue?
Shawn Fain
Like many families in this country, mine came from humble beginnings. We were working-class people who believed that if you worked hard, you could build a better life. My grandparents left the South during the Great Depression, looking for opportunity. They ended up in Indiana, where they found UAW jobs that changed the course of our family’s future.
That same hope — the hope for something better — is what’s driving people to our borders today. The crisis at the border is a humanitarian crisis, and it’s caused by corporate greed. It’s a crisis caused by giant companies that move across borders every day chasing low wages and weak laws, and by politicians who point the finger at immigrants while ignoring the real damage those corporations leave behind.
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