Shawn Fain, the president of the United Automobile Workers, assailed a new executive order signed this week by President Trump as an attack on federal workers.
He compared it to the 1981 air traffic controller strike, when President Ronald Reagan fired 11,000 air traffic controllers.
“This is 100 times worse than PATCO ever dreamed of being,” Fain said, referring to the Port Authority Corporation, “when you’re talking, you know — 700,000 people — their contracts just being taken away.”
“Free speech is under attack. Unions are under attack,” Fain told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett in an interview airing Sunday on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
On Thursday, the president signed an executive order to stop or slow down collective bargaining with agencies that have national security responsibilities, claiming that unions have stood in the way of their management. It affects a broad swath of agencies across the federal government, including some that do not have direct national security duties. The departments of defense, homeland security, state, energy, treasury and health and human services are listed in the order.
Fain blamed the “billionaires,” who he said “want more tax cuts for themselves.”
“It’s been proven time and again that’s not what works for America,” he continued. “That’s not good for the American people, the working class people in America.”
“They want their fair share. They’re not asking to be rich,” Fain told Garrett. “They just want a decent standard of living,” which he distilled into four issues, “living wages, adequate health care, retirement security and having some quality of life other than just everything revolving around work.”
