UAW Reformers Muster Forces to Hold Bosses to Their Word

By Keith Brower Brown, Jane Slaughter 

October 3, 2024

Source: Labor Notes
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Auto Workers President Shawn Fain addressed the convention of the union’s Unite All Workers for Democracy caucus near Detroit. He spoke of his pride in being a caucus member, saying that the transformation of the UAW thus far “began with the people in this room.” Photo: Luis Feliz Leon


A year after the United Auto Workers’ Stand-Up Strike, the union caucus that helped make it possible is setting out to transform locals still stuck in the mud. Their first step is to fight a new onslaught of layoffs, broken promises, and retaliation from CEOs.

The reform caucus Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) held its first convention last weekend outside Detroit, with 150 UAW members, mostly auto workers but also from higher ed, legal services, and heavy equipment manufacturing.

Shafarrah Hill, a Stellantis transport driver from a Detroit local, said she joined the convention after local officers did nothing about bullying by her supervisors. “My union steward has been telling me for two years,” she said, “that if I want to do something about it, I need to come to UAWD.”

The caucus was formed in 2019 to campaign for one-member-one-vote elections for top offices. After winning that right, it had to put up or shut up, and backed candidates on the Members United slate for seven seats on the UAW executive board, winning a sweep in 2022-23 and electing Shawn Fain president. That victory was quickly followed by the Stand-Up Strike at the Big 3 automakers last fall, which won contract gains worth the previous four contracts combined.

But all has not been smooth sailing since then, for either the union or the caucus. UAW Vice President Mike Booth said, “We’re passing; it’s not straight A’s.”

Stellantis, in particular, has laid off hundreds of temporary workers, refused to honor its contractual commitment to reopen a closed plant (in Belvidere, Illinois), and said it will move certain assembly work from Detroit across the river to Canada.

The Stellantis contract, it turned out, actually contained an ugly concession on the attendance policy, supported by UAW Vice President Rich Boyer, that has made it much harder for workers to get time off, with heavy overtime still required. That has contributed to widespread disillusionment with the union among Stellantis workers—egged on by the old-guard officials heading the locals.

ENFORCING THE CONTRACT

In May, Fain removed Boyer as head of the Stellantis Department, citing “dereliction of duty” (he remains a vice president) and noting, among other factors, Boyer’s holding of a March meeting for UAW-Stellantis reps in sunny Puerto Rico (there are no Stellantis locals on the island).

Fain then began an aggressive campaign to enforce the contract, using new language that gives the union the right to strike over investment decisions. He alerted the nation to the union’s new fight when he spoke at the Democratic National Convention. On September 26, the union’s Stellantis Council authorized a strike. The International will agitate for strike votes in the locals.

“We have a strike vote coming up in October,” said Paul Davidson, a steward in Local 212 in Detroit. “You have a lot of people who are scared. You have a lot of people that are from the other group sowing seeds of doubt and fear.” But when old-guard local leaders gin up fear, Davidson said, he responds by bringing up their side’s 80-year stranglehold on power and sell-out contracts.

“You bring that history back up,” he said, “especially if you’re two-tier. I’m two-tier. I still don’t have a pension. It’s not what it’s supposed to be. But everything is better: no $20,000 fountain pens, no steak dinners, no bribes.” The exposure, starting in 2017, of scandalous corruption at the union’s highest levels—including top UAW officers embezzling and misusing funds, and taking bribes from Fiat Chrysler, now Stellantis—propelled the movement for direct elections.

“You remind these people in your union, brothers and sisters, who have this doubt and this fear, especially with the October strike vote coming, how we got here before, and what you gained,” Davidson said.

The union’s General Motors Department also angered members after last year’s strike when it was slow to clarify when early retirements would be available, and for how many workers. At some GM plants, members are still working heavy forced overtime to make up for production lost during the strike.

Another roadblock has come from old-guard staff of the union, who were rarely expected before to organize members against their bosses. A cozy relationship with the companies and a culture of rising in the union to cushy jobs at headquarters had existed for decades.

Old-guard UAW staffers at the International and in the regions, often using their staff union, have dug in their heels against the new expectations, filing dozens of grievances—and griping about new staff who came on with a different attitude. A strict staff contract limits elected leaders’ ability to dismiss holdovers standing in the way.

In February, the executive board reassigned many of the duties of Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock, citing her unwillingness to approve basic expenditures. Mock and Boyer had both been part of the UAWD-backed slate, and the caucus has supported the shake-up. “Our slate didn’t stay together,” Region 9 Director Daniel Vicente told the UAWD convention. “And we didn’t have a deep bench.”

TAKING ROOT IN LOCALS

Vicente told members that the reasons UAWD was formed—to fight tiers, corruption, and concessions—were still there. “You have to run [for office] in the locals,” he said, “and put in the infrastructure that puts the members at the heart of the organization.”

Across 15 workshops, the UAWD convention prepped members to organize shop floor fights with management and to run for office in locals still administered by adherents of the old regime—the vast majority of local officials.

Big delegations came from the huge locals at Stellantis’s Toledo Jeep and Ford’s Chicago Assembly plant, where UAWD members have been organizing actions from the bottom up. At Ford, they started an unofficial contract action committee in April 2023, when local officials said it was “too early.” A recent petition campaign forced management to boost parking lot security. At Jeep, members organized a first-ever march on the boss to protest the layoffs of temp employees.

In workshops, members talked about how to become better stewards and turn grievances into collective action, along with organizing the unorganized, enforcing contracts, winning union officer elections, and building UAWD chapters. They discussed the transition to electric vehicles, the UAW’s earlier reform movements, solidarity with Mexican auto workers, cross-racial solidarity, and an assessment of the Big 3 contracts.

In a contract campaigns workshop, Ben Smith of Local 5287 told of the union’s victory at Daimler Truck in North Carolina. He said four UAWD members from four Daimler plants coordinated to make cross-local T-shirts, a popular Facebook group called “DTNA for a Strong Contract,” and “Will Strike If Provoked” signs that members pasted to truck windows and the plant time-clock. With strong support from the International and raucous support from the rank and file, the union won 25 percent wage increases and “broke two-tier,” Smith said.

“Some union leaders are afraid of open discussion on Facebook,” he said. “They’re afraid of anti-union comments or anti-unity. But discussion is how you resolve that.” The Daimler contract is set to expire just two months before May 1, 2028, when the Big 3 auto contracts expire.

Alex Bruns-Smith talked about a recent contract campaign in her unit of 150 legal services workers. When reformers were elected to the bargaining committee, they practiced “extreme transparency,” she said, along with practice pickets. Besides open bargaining, they brought management’s counter-proposals back to members, asking “Is this enough?” “Then we could tell management it wasn’t,” Bruns-Smith said.

In the Organizing 101 workshop, staff organizer Mara Rafferty, fresh from a slew of winning campaigns in higher education in the Pacific Northwest, advised listeners that “humans are like bears—they can smell fear.” She urged budding organizers, therefore, to “be normal. Be yourself. Start with what you know and just tell people what you know.” Veteran GM leader Bill Bagwell added, “We’re also like cavemen—and we’re the ones with the fire: the knowledge.”

Most attendees were veterans of at least one of UAWD’s campaigns: for one-member-one-vote, for convention delegate, to win the Stand-Up Strike and other strikes, sometimes to organize new shops. Some were local officials, but few newbies had run for local office.

John Monkovic, a cook at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was part of a winning strike of service and maintenance employees this August. Local 2300 had been “a sleepy local,” he told Labor Notes, but with help from reform Region 9 leaders, members started an education committee and mapped the 200 buildings on campus to build a strong strike. “It took a push from below and from above,” he said.

ELECTING TO ORGANIZE

UAWD had its own election at the convention: two slates vied for six open slots on the UAWD steering committee, out of 11 total. The slate headed by founder and committee chair Scott Houldieson, an electrician at Chicago Assembly, won with nearly two-thirds of the vote, which included members watching on Zoom.

The other slate, “Call to Action,” emphasized “unendorsing” UAWD candidates who had gone astray. “It’s necessary to have sincere candidates,” said Mike Cannon, running for retiree representative. The winning “UAWD Strong” candidates spoke of their organizing successes in their locals, and a need for more agitation on the shop floor.

The caucus also heard how their breakthroughs to date had reshaped new organizing. Rob Lett, a member-leader in the drive to unionize Mercedes in Alabama, said that previous efforts at the plant had faded out when staff organizers shot down workers’ ideas. “In the fall of 2023 when we saw the Stand-Up Strike,” he said, “it was clear that the philosophy of the union had changed.”

Though the Mercedes workers narrowly lost their vote last May, they’ve benefited greatly from the “UAW bump” as management ponied up to keep the union out. Their top pay will rise to $37 an hour this month.

Wearing his iconic “Eat the Rich” T-shirt, Shawn Fain opened his talk with his pride in being a caucus member, given that the transformation of the UAW thus far “began with the people in this room.” Holding up strike placards from the heady past year and a half, Fain said, “A better world is possible, but only if we have the labor movement leading the way… for the whole working class.”

Luis Feliz Leon contributed reporting.