At the forefront of the historic auto workers’ strike that’s roiling Detroit’s Big Three automakers—General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford—is United Auto Workers (UAW) president Shawn Fain, and he’s often literally wearing an “EAT THE RICH” t-shirt. Fain hasn’t been shy about voicing his opinions on the ultrawealthy. “Billionaires, in my opinion, don’t have a right to exist,” Fain said last month, and he’s bringing a favorite theory of firebrand Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to the forefront of the labor movement.

For years, the progressive lawmaker has been voicing his sentiment that, “There should be no billionaires,” making it the centerpiece of his two presidential campaigns and even proposing a wealth tax to make them obsolete. Fain’s anti-billionaire rhetoric is the logical extension of Sanders’ argument—and the narrative has become central to the ongoing auto strike.

Just as Sanders’ bold tax-and-spend campaign overturned decades of conventional Democratic thinking about the kinds of messages that voters could stomach, let alone rally behind, Fain’s unapologetic anti-billionaire sentiments mark a new era in the U.S. labor movement, which hasn’t been this militant in decades.

“The very existence of billionaires shows us that we have an economy that is working for the benefit of the few and not the many,” Fain told UAW members at the end of August. “I say the same is true for poverty wages and long hours. We need to wipe them out.”

Fittingly, Fain and Sanders recently crossed paths when the senator joined the UAW for a rally and march on Sept. 15. Some 40,000 striking unionized auto workers are demanding a nearly 40% pay raise over the course of a four-year contract to make up for years of inflation, as well as other benefits.

The UAW has shot down automakers’ attempts to paint workers’ wage demands as unrealistic by pointing to the salaries of the Big Three CEOs, who are paid hundreds of times the salary of their average worker (and multiple times what CEOs at European carmakers earn).

When Ford CEO Jim Farley told CNBC there was “no way” the company could meet the UAW’s demands, the union shot back on X, “This man made $21 MILLION DOLLARS last year.” In 2022, the median Ford employee made less than $75,000, while Farley took home the pay equivalent to 281 Ford workers, according to SEC filings.

At least one analyst is on the UAW’s side, with Morgan Stanley saying in a note that the automakers could likely afford the union’s demand for a 36% pay hike—something Fain himself has called “audacious.”

Since the strike began over five weeks ago, some have feared the impact that a long-lasting work stoppage could have on the economy, with the Business Roundtable saying it is “deeply concerned.” But Fain has put the responsibility on the carmakers, suggesting that it’s the top brass at the Big Three who have the most to lose.

“It’s not [that] we’ll wreck the economy. We’ll wreck their economy, the economy that only works for the billionaire class and not the working class,” Fain told CNN in September.

“There’s a billionaire class, and there’s the rest of us,” Fain told the press outside a Ford plant in Wayne, Mich. “We’re all expected to sit back and take the scraps and live paycheck to paycheck and scrape to get by. We’re second-class citizens.”

Sanders’ hand in the UAW strikes

Sanders has been saying variations of the same lines for years. The senator has long touted the idea of imposing much higher taxes on the wealthiest factions of U.S. society. During his 2019 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, he created a tax plan that would eventually eliminate the billionaire class and redistribute their wealth to the working class.

In a May interview with HBO Max’s Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, Sanders aggressively defended this view.

“Are you basically saying that once you get to $999 million, the government should confiscate all the rest?” Sanders was asked

“Yeah,” Sanders responded. “You may disagree with me, but I think people can make it on $999 million. I think that they can survive just fine.”

“You can have a vibrant economy without [a handful of] people owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society,” he said, adding that, if he had his way then those making “a whole lot of money” would have to “pay a whole lot of money.”

Ford and General Motors are already feeling the pinch from the five-week strike. General Motors CFO Paul Jacobson said on Tuesday’s earnings call that the strike impacted it by $800 million this year, and are due to cost it $200 million per week after that. The same day, GM disclosed a profit of more than $3 billion for the quarter—and Fain’s union widened its strike, with 5,000 workers walking out of the Arlington, Texas, plant that makes GM’s most profitable SUV models.

Fain said on Friday that the automakers had united on a 23% wage hike but told members that “there is more to be won.” This has led some to wonder if his “audacious” demands have gone too far—or if he has a plan to bring the strikes to a close.

“He’s gotten far more from the companies than anyone, in particular the companies, may have expected,” Harley Shaiken, a professor emeritus specializing in labor at the University of California Berkeley, told the Associated Press. “But now is the critical point where you pull the package together. If it isn’t now, when will it be?”