The president of the United Auto Workers union is taking a tough stance against General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis. His members seem to like it.
All summer Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers union, has been reminding people—mainly, the Big Three U.S. auto makers—that Sept. 14 is a hard deadline. Contracts for nearly 150,000 workers at Ford Motor, General Motors, and Stellantis expire late Thursday night and the threat of a strike looms if deals aren’t in place by then.
At the outset the union demanded a 40% increase in pay over four years “to match the salary increases of the Big Three CEOs,” as Fain put it recently, alongside demands for cost-of-living-adjustments, retiree benefits, job security measures, and more paid time off. The union this week revised the pay demand to a still-hefty mid-30% increase, The Wall Street Journal reported. The high-stakes negotiations could determine the contours of the UAW’s next four-year contract with auto makers—or lead to a walkout at one or more of the auto makers. Fain, newly elected to UAW’s top post, has carved out an image as a brash, tough-minded negotiator who’s not here to make nice with auto companies. When bargaining opened in July, Fain refused to take part in a traditional handshake ceremony with auto executives, and instead visited Michigan plants for each of the Big Three to shake hands with union members. When he received company proposals he saw as too skimpy, Fain threw them in the trash—a move that has elevated the humble wastebasket emoji into a symbol of worker solidarity online. Fain consistently hammers home the profitability of auto makers and says it’s time for workers to get their share. “Our plants have been closed, families torn apart. Our standard of living has dropped like a rock,” he said on a recent livestream. GM has said it’s working toward an outcome that recognizes employees’ “vital role” in the company’s success. Stellantis, which makes Jeep, Dodge, and Chrysler vehicles, has said it’s “committed to fairly rewarding” workers. And Ford has said “we believe in American workers” and in its partnership with UAW.Fain’s hometown is Kokomo, Ind., where he worked as an electrician at a Chrysler plant and joined the UAW in 1994. He traces his union roots to his grandparents, who found jobs at General Motors and Chrysler after moving to Indiana in the wake of the Great Depression. Among various positions at his Local 1166 in Kokomo, Fain was a plant shop chairman and a vocal opponent of plant idling and closures. His bio on the UAW website says he was “ostracized” many times for speaking against agreements he thought didn’t serve the membership. Fain also served as a UAW negotiator during Chrysler’s bankruptcy in 2009.Past UAW presidents were selected by delegates. But that changed after a corruption scandal and a federal consent decree with the Justice Department in 2021 paved the way for the union’s first-ever direct election last year. Fain ran as a change candidate who would fight for members at the bargaining table. The election went to a runoff and, in March, Fain won by a margin of just under 500 votes. “The results were a pretty amazing shake up,” says Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in labor and the global economy, and Fain has since “seized the moment.”In May, Fain and his fellow officers streamed UAW’s first town hall for union members. Fain pledged a new approach to communicating with membership during bargaining via livestreams, social media, and updates to local chapters. The fight for a better contract would be won, he said, “because our members are informed, our members are organized, and they’re united.” “He has used social media far more extensively and effectively than any of his predecessors, and during the negotiations he has disclosed a lot of material that was never disclosed at this point in the negotiations,” Shaiken says. Engaging the membership also sends a message to the companies, Shaiken adds, that “they’re not dealing with a disillusioned and fractured union,” but rather one that is prepared to strike.Fain has attacked a two-tier wage system reviled by members. Tiered wages were accepted by the UAW in 2007, resulting in a system that slashed starting pay for new hires and means a longer road to reach top pay for a role. “You’ve got folks who’ve got to go eight years to get to full pay right now,” says Todd Dunn, President of UAW Local 862 in Louisville, Ky. That was unheard of when he started working at Ford in 1995, he says. An offer from Ford in late August proposed eliminating tiers. And that’s just one of many issues “across the board” that matter to members’ careers and retirement, says Dunn. “The wages have stagnated, the raises have not been where they needed to be.”Local unions have already made detailed plans for strike picket duty should it come to that. “We’ve got strike coordinators that coordinate every gate for each shift, strike captains for each gate on every shift,” says Dunn. “We’ve got members lined up for each of those opportunities.” Dunn says the membership is “100%” behind the negotiators. From the top level of UAW to the local level, Dunn says this is the most “dialed in with discipline and detail” he’s ever seen.
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