DETROIT – On Sept. 7, the UAW released a new video that shows how some in the corporate media are parroting pro-company talking points in their reporting on negotiations between the union and the Big Three automakers. In the video, UAW President Shawn Fain debunks a Sept. 5 NBC Nightly News story claiming that autoworkers taking action will drive car prices higher. Fain notes that over the last four years the average price of a new car has increased by 30 percent while autoworker wages have risen only 6 percent. During that time, the Big Three have made massive profits. They made a ...
Read more
In response to GM’s proposal submitted on September 7, UAW President Shawn Fain released the following statement: “After refusing to bargain in good faith for the past six weeks, only after having federal labor board charges filed against them, GM has come to the table with an insulting proposal that doesn’t come close to an equitable agreement for America’s autoworkers. GM either doesn’t care or isn’t listening when we say we need economic justice at GM by 11:59pm on September 14th. The clock is ticking. Stop wasting our members’ time. Tick tock.”
This Labor Day, the UAW released “Prosperity,” a new video showing how the union has helped lift millions of American families into the middle class. One of those families was UAW President Shawn Fain’s. In the video, partly filmed at two practice pickets last month in Louisville, Fain tells of the poverty his grandparents endured in Kentucky and Tennessee and the prosperity they found in the UAW-organized auto plants of Kokomo, Indiana. “As the companies prospered, so did my family,” Fain says in the video. “That didn’t just magically happen. It happened because of the UAW. It happened because they and ...
Read more
UAW President Shawn Fain held a Facebook Live on Thursday evening to update our membership on the current state of Big Three negotiations. He addressed a number of issues during the stream, including a response to Ford’s contract proposal. On the criticism that the UAW is demanding too much from the Big Three: “I know that our demands are ambitious, but I’ve told the companies repeatedly, I’m not the reason that members’ expectations are so high. What’s driving members’ expectations are the Big Three’s profits. You cannot make $21 billion in profits in half a year and expect members ...
Read more
On September 7, General Motors finally submitted their first counterproposal to the economic demands that we put on the table more than a month ago. As UAW President Shawn Fain said, it is “an insulting proposal that doesn’t come close to an equitable agreement for America’s autoworkers.” Click here for a comparison of our Members’ Demands to their unacceptable offer.
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $15.5 billion in new grants and loans to support a just transition to electric vehicles. This includes a $2 billion domestic conversion grant program, $10 billion in domestic conversion loans from the DOE Loan Program Office, and $3.5 billion in battery supply chain funding. UAW President Shawn Fain issued this statement about the new DOE grants and loans: “The UAW supports and is ready for the transition to a clean auto industry. But the EV transition must be a just transition that ensures auto workers have a place in the new economy. Today’s announcement from the Department of ...
Read more
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – UAW President Shawn Fain announced today that the union’s strike authorization vote passed with near universal approval from the 150,000 union workers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. Final votes are still being tabulated, but the current combined average across the Big Three was 97% in favor of strike authorization. The vote does not guarantee a strike will be called, only that the union has the right to call a strike if the Big Three refuse to reach a fair deal. “Our union’s membership is clearly fed up with living paycheck-to-paycheck while the corporate elite and billionaire ...
Read more
LORDSTOWN, Oh. – The UAW announced today that union workers at Ultium Cells, a joint venture between General Motors and LG Energy Solution, have won a breakthrough agreement to immediately raise wages by $3 to $4 an hour, as well as thousands of dollars of back pay for hundreds of workers. Ultium workers will vote on whether to ratify the interim deal in the coming days. The interim deal follows months of negotiations and a public UAW campaign to win justice for electric vehicle workers at Ultium and across the country. “After months of public pressure and worker organizing, Ultium ...
Read more
The campaign for a strong contract at the Big Three is taking off. UAW members and allies have started spontaneously organizing grassroots actions around the country and UAW President Shawn Fain is strongly encouraging them. Today, while in Louisville, Kentucky, to join two practice pickets, he sent an email to tens of thousands of union activists encouraging them to keep intensifying their grassroots organizing. Here is the text of the letter, along with materials he circulated to use in their actions: UAW family, I’m writing to you from Louisville, Kentucky, where I’m joining UAW Local 862 members at two ...
Read more
UAW President Shawn Fain will be joining practice pickets this week in Detroit, Mich., and Louisville, Ky. Practice pickets are not work stoppages; no entrances will be obstructed, and workers will report to their shifts as usual. (Dates, times and locations of all three practice pickets are below.) Fain’s visits to the practice picket lines come as 150,000 UAW members at the Big Three are holding strike authorization votes. Voting is scheduled to end by Aug. 24 and results are expected to be announced on Aug. 25. Bargaining at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis began in mid-July and the union’s ...
Read more