UAW President Shawn Fain, left, and former President Donald Trump. (Photos by Anna Liz Nichols and Ashley Murray)

Former President Donald Trump used his acceptance speech Thursday night at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to call for the firing of United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain.

“The leader of the United Auto Workers should be fired immediately,” said Trump, as he formally accepted the GOP presidential nomination. “And every single auto worker, union and non-union, should be voting for Donald Trump.”

While Fain has yet to personally respond to Trump’s statement, his union was quick to respond on social media.

UAW President Shawn Fain touts solidarity as Kentucky AFL-CIO prepares to choose a new leader

“@realDonaldTrump is a scab and a billionaire and that’s who he represents. We know which side we’re on. Not his,” stated the post.

Trump’s antagonism toward Fain is nothing new, nor Fain’s dismissal of Trump as looking out for working-class people.

“Donald Trump is a scab,” Fain said to loud applause and whistling at the UAW’s biannual political conference in Washington, D.C. in January when the UAW officially endorsed President Joe Biden.

“Donald Trump is a billionaire and that’s who he represents. If Donald Trump ever worked in an auto plant, he wouldn’t be a UAW member. He’d be a company man, trying to squeeze the American autoworker,” said Fain.

The call for Fain’s firing came three days after Teamsters President Sean O’Brien addressed the convention and called Trump, appearing publicly for the first time since an assassination attempt, “one tough S.O.B” while also urging Republicans opposed to organized labor to rethink their stance.

Trump’s call for Fain’s firing followed his claim that China was planning to sell vehicles in the United States after being assembled in Mexico.

“The United Auto Workers ought to be ashamed for allowing this to happen,” said Trump, although how the UAW could control one foreign nation building cars in another foreign nation wasn’t clear.

While it is true that Chinese companies have been building cars in Mexico with the intention of selling them in the U.S., they have been unsuccessful in doing so, especially with a 25% tariff instituted during the Trump administration, which was increased to 100% by Biden in May.

Trump also continued to claim the Biden administration has instituted electric vehicle mandates, a theme echoed earlier in the week by former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-White Lake) when he spoke to the convention. Rogers is running for U.S. Senate.

The GOP talking point refers to Environmental Protection Agency targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions by mid-century that factored in anticipated increases in electric vehicles. As the demand for EVs has fallen off, the Biden administration has adjusted its forecast for EV transition, with no actual mandate.

Fain, meanwhile, gained momentum for the American labor movement when he secured record-breaking new contracts last fall with General Motors, Ford and Stellantis (a.k.a. the Detroit Three). The UAW then followed that up with a $40 million commitment in February to organize non-union automobile and electric vehicle battery workers over the next two years, which Fain described for Michigan Advance at the time as a “generation-defining moment.”

That effort has had mixed results. The UAW won a historic victory in April when Volkswagen workers in Tennessee became the first southern autoworkers outside of the Detroit Three to join the union. That was tempered in May when workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama voted against the union.

Fain is also dealing with an independent UAW monitor — as the union is under federal oversight — investigating both he and Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock amid a leadership shakeup.

This story is republished from Michigan Advance, like the Kentucky Lantern, a part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.