Strike Strategy Paid Off, UAW President Tells Rank-and-File

While UAW members are voting on new tentative agreements with the Detroit Three automakers, union President Shawn Fain is emphasizing to workers they have won a significant victory that will change lives and bring new members into the UAW as it looks ahead to negotiations in 2028.

During a Facebook Live appearance designed to bolster support during ratification voting, Fain maintains the union’s unprecedented “Stand-Up Strikes” brought the UAW the largest economic gains it has won “in decades.” 

The strikes also represent a moral victory that goes beyond the 25% raise and cost-of-living allowance, according to Fain, who is preparing to appear with President Joe Biden at the Stellantis assembly plant in Belvidere, IL. The plant shut down last winter and was threatened with permanent closure. But the tentative agreement with Stellantis says the plant will stay open and build a new product within terms of the proposed contract, says Fain, who describes saving Belvidere as a major victory for the UAW and its members during this year’s negotiations.

“I told you if you had faith, we could move mountains,” notes Fain (pictured, below left), who displayed his family Bible and recited a favorite prayer at the beginning of the 44-day strike to encourage UAW members to believe in the union’s strategy.

“We won back our dignity as autoworkers,” the one-time Stellantis electrician says. “We won back our pride in being UAW. We won back our strike muscle,” adds Fain, who won the UAW presidency earlier this year in a contested election after a series of scandals that sent two former union presidents to prison.  

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But as of Jan. 1, Toyota workers in the U.S. will get what Fain calls a “UAW bump” in the form of a 9% wage increase and a shorter progression to the top of the automaker’s wage scale. 

“We needed to fight like we’ve never fought before and win like we’ve never won before,” says Fain. “We had doubters, we had naysayers and we had enemies, but we also had champions. We had leaders and we had organizers, and I don’t mean people like me or people on TV or people who wear suits. I mean you, the workers, the workers who really run these companies, the members who really run this union.”

Fain tells members he is preparing the agenda for the next round of negotiations in 2028 and says the union will continue to pursue goals such as a 32-hour work week and defined-benefit pensions, which it failed to win this time. The push for a shorter work week led to the elimination of alternative work schedules, he notes, and the demand for improved retirement has met pushback from Wall Street.

Workers hired before 2007 can still count on pensions and retiree health care, but those hired later cannot because the automakers, under pressure from Wall Street, did not want the expense on corporate balance sheets.

The difference in pensions and retirement security between older legacy workers and newer hires remains one of the union’s top challenges, Fain says.

Nonetheless, the union this year still won major concessions from Stellantis, Ford and General Motors such as the elimination of wage tiers, restoration of cost-of-living and the right to organize workers at new battery plants spawned by the transition to electric vehicles – goals that many observers believed were beyond the UAW’s reach, according to Fain.

“We squeezed every penny we could get out of these companies,” the union president says.

Fain’s appearance on Facebook Live comes on the heels of social media posts and online discussion of the contracts, where some union members have pointed to what they see as weaknesses in the contract.

The early ratification voting indicates the contracts will be approved.

But the contract was voted down by a 52%-48% margin at a GM engine plant in Flint, MI, and a segment of legacy workers have complained the general wage increase isn’t large enough to cover what union members lost to inflation in the past four years. Some older workers also contend the biggest contract gains are going to younger workers lower in the wage progression and temporary employees.

Under the tentative agreements, the cash bonuses added to the 2015 and 2019 contracts were eliminated in place of general wage increases paid over the new contracts’ 4 ½ years and the cost-of-living allowance, which will yield more than the old bonus system, according to the UAW.