Alex Press writes for Jacobin:
In years past, the negotiations between the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the Big Three auto manufacturers — Ford, General Motors (GM), and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) — began with the union’s president shaking hands with the auto executives across the bargaining table. Not so this year.
Newly elected UAW president Shawn Fain declined to participate in the ritual, choosing instead to shake hands with members at Stellantis’s Sterling Heights Assembly Plant, GM’s Factory Zero Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center, and Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne. The three plants represent some of the roughly 150,000 workers covered under the UAW’s master agreement with the Big Three, which expires on September 14.
The move was a symbolic message: this year’s negotiations will not be business as usual.
That comes as no surprise: Fain represents a new chapter for the union, the first international president directly elected by the members after decades of one-party rule by the union’s Administration Caucus. Leaders of that caucus recently went to prison after decades of corruption, leading the federal government to appoint a monitor to oversee reform in the union and then a 2021 referendum on direct elections for leadership, which passed handily.
Fain ran on a slate called UAW Members United, and all seven of the slate’s candidates won their leadership elections. They were backed by Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), a reform caucus of which Fain is a member. The group first formed to push for direct elections and has since pivoted to building up rank-and-file leadership and engagement in the union.
The slogan of Fain’s slate was “No corruption. No concessions. No tiers.” Now, with the expiration date of the Big Three master agreement fast approaching, members hope to make those promises reality — even if it requires a strike to do so.
Read more in Jacobin.