Steven Greenhouse interviewed Shawn Fain, candidate for UAW President, for In These Times:
Challenger Shawn Fain is set to win a historic runoff election for the presidency of the United Auto Workers (UAW), likely defeating incumbent Ray Curry in a nail-biting finish.
Fain was leading Curry 50.2% to 49.8% heading into Thursday’s count of challenged ballots. According to a statement released by UAW Members United, Fain is still leading by 505 votes while fewer than 600 challenged ballots remain to be counted, making his victory “all but assured.” Fain led the UAW Members United slate, promising more militancy and rank-and-file participation; the slate has won every seat it contested in the UAW’s officer elections.
Fain’s all but certain victory marks the first-ever election in which UAW members voted directly to elect their top officers. Previously, the UAW’s top officials were elected by delegates at a union convention. It’s also historic because it will end 77 consecutive years of rule by the Administration Caucus, which was founded by Walter Reuther and has run the union since 1946.
Fain first joined the UAW in 1994 as an electrician at a Chrysler (now Stellantis) metal casting plant in Kokomo, Ind. He has served five terms as a Skilled Trades Committeeperson and Shop Chair at Local 1166 in Kokomo. Fain has pledged to make the UAW, now with 400,000 members, a more bottom-up union that will take a tougher stance in bargaining. His platform promises an end to corruption, concessions and tiers, which would mean an end to the detested two-tier wage system that the UAW previously agreed to at GM, Ford and Stellantis.
Fain and Curry were the top two finishers in a five-candidate race for a four-year term as UAW president. A two-person runoff was held because neither Fain nor Curry obtained the required 50% of the initial vote. The UAW’s international executive board had elected Curry as president in July 2021, after the worst corruption scandal in the UAW’s history — a bribery-and-embezzlement scandal in which two former UAW presidents went to prison.
Among Fain’s biggest challenges ahead are this year’s contract talks with the three Detroit automakers and making good on his promise to end tiers. Beyond that, Fain will face the task of uniting a highly divided union and organizing more workplaces, from universities to casinos to auto plants in the South.