class struggle

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, September 28, 2023

By Chris Walker - Truthout, September 28, 2023

At least a few people who attended former President Donald Trump’s speech to auto workers on Wednesday evening were not who they purported to be, according to a report on the event, with some admitting they were neither union members nor auto workers.

According to a report written by The Detroit News’s Craig Mauger, around 400 to 500 Trump supporters attended the speech, which was given at a Drake Enterprises auto parts facility. That company is not represented by any union, including the United Auto Workers (UAW), which is currently striking against the Big Three automakers in the U.S.

Drake Enterprises only employs around 150 workers, and it’s unclear who the other attendees at the Trump speech — which was intended to be directed specifically toward auto workers — actually were. It’s likely that those present were community members rather than people employed by the company, as Clinton Township, where the facility is located, was near-evenly split between Trump and President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

Upon being approached by The Detroit News, some individuals who attended the event admitted that the signs they held weren’t representative of their identities.

“One individual in the crowd who held a sign that said ‘union members for Trump,’ acknowledged that she wasn’t a union member when approached by a Detroit News reporter after the event,” Mauger’s report stated. “Another person with a sign that read ‘auto workers for Trump’ said he wasn’t an auto worker when asked for an interview.”

By Keith Brower Brown - Labor Notes, September 28, 2023

The 18,000 Auto Workers on strike have lit up the labor movement. But the strike is only the most visible side of auto workers’ leverage.

The less visible side is on the shop floor, where organized refusals of voluntary overtime have shut down multiple lines and whole factories for entire weekends since the strike began.

Among the 130,000 UAW members still working at the Big 3 auto companies, shop floor creativity is bringing back a bold tradition of “work to rule”—where workers coordinate to do only their explicit duties by the book, and nothing more. When production slows to a crawl, it proves how workers’ savvy was what kept the factory humming to begin with.

The reform caucus Unite All Workers for Democracy, which backed the election of President Shawn Fain and the rest of his Members United slate, has become a hub for these militant tactics. UAWD’s weekly “Members’ Update” calls and a “Members’ Voice” strike bulletin focus on spreading tactics to push managers and bring more co-workers into action.

The caucus launched a Refuse Voluntary Overtime pledge; members have used the pledge and its leaflets to rapidly organize hundreds of co-workers to join the refusal.

The rebellion from the ranks is forcing management to scramble for a counterattack. In the last week, hoping to keep those profitable Escalades and F-150s rolling out, managers at plants across the Big 3 tried to make weekend overtime mandatory.

But members at many plants figured out new ways to hold the line with their striking siblings. Some are declining to take the usual shortcuts, like riding bicycles around a big plant. Others are exploiting the unique legal environment of working under an expired contract: it is now an unfair labor practice for management to make unilateral changes to wages or working conditions. If bosses want to change something, they have to bargain it.

Auto Workers at four plants shared these dispatches on their co-workers’ latest inventions.

By Lucy Dean Stockton - The Lever, September 27, 2023

This story was produced in collaboration with The Nation.

The United Auto Workers are entering their third week of the first-ever simultaneous strike against the three big automakers, and for the first time, a sitting US president, Joe Biden, joined them on the picket line. Executives at General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis are pushing back on worker demands by invoking the climate crisis. They say it is impossible to give workers what they want while also making a swift transition to manufacturing electric vehicles.

On September 14, Ford’s CEO Jim Farley said that the union’s demands — higher wages, better hours, an end to tiered employment, and guaranteed job security in a green energy transition — could send the company into bankruptcy. Mary Barra, the CEO of GM, said that the union’s demands are “unrealistic” and would make GM less competitive. Major outlets have echoed these claims, even arguing that the UAW’s strike will harm the environment by stalling EV production.

But these corporate arguments are undercut by the fact that these companies have authorized billions in stock buybacks, special dividends, and executive compensation. The automakers could have invested that money into worker compensation and electric vehicles, but instead steered it toward stockholders.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, September 27, 2023

By John Cast and Ernie Gotta - Workers Voice, September 26, 2023

On Sept. 15, the United Auto Workers (UAW) began, for the first time, a strike against each of the Big Three automakers—Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors (GM). The following Friday, Sept. 22, the strike was expanded from an initial three production facilities to include 38 parts suppliers, bringing the total number of strikers to just under 20,000.

Demands include the need to raise long stagnant wages to match inflation, the end of a tiered wage system, bringing back cost-of-living adjustments (COLA), and the institution of a four-day week—or a 32-hour week at 40 hours pay. Another demand raised is the restoration of the defined-benefit pension and retiree health care. Any workers hired since 2007 have not had these benefits.

UAW President Shawn Fain noted in his live-stream address to union members that the Big Three can easily afford to give auto workers these demands—and more. Fain stated, “Finally, and this is key: the cost of labor for the Big Three is around 4–5 percent of total operations. Think about that. They could double our wages, not raise car prices, and still make billions of dollars.”

The UAW leadership is calling their tactic the “Stand Up Strike,” in which only a selected few plants go on strike. Initially, 13,000 of the 150,000 UAW members employed by these companies were on strike at the three plants before the walkout was expanded to the parts distribution centers, adding an additional 5600 members to the picket lines. Fain explained, “The beauty of the stand-up strike is that it provides us maximum flexibility moving forward. We are keeping all of our options open as we continue to bargain with the companies. So an all-out strike is still possible. Our options are open.”

The great majority of rank-and-file workers have shown great enthusiasm for the strike. Yet some of the ranks expressed skepticism when the tactic was announced. For example, during a Facebook live stream, many workers commented in the chat that they wanted a stronger response; they wanted all of the 150,000 workers to go out on strike at once.

While the “Stand Up Strike ” doesn’t yet evoke the same power and rank-and-file driven initiative as the sit-down strikes of the 1930s, there have been significant changes and a more aggressive class-struggle posture taken by the new UAW leadership in comparison to its predecessors. From refusing a long-standing tradition of shaking hands with the Big Three CEOs prior to negotiations, to the class-struggle rhetoric of wrecking the billionaires’ economy, Fain recognizes that rank-and-file UAW members are fed up with the usual bureaucratic pomp and circumstance of the past few decades.

At the same time, UAW leaders still align themselves with progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders and are even welcoming strike-breaking President Biden to the picket lines. What type of solidarity can be expected from a president like Biden, who broke a potential railroad strike by forcing a deadly concessionary contract on union rail workers?

By Jeff Schuhrke - In These Times, September 26, 2023

On Tuesday, Joe Biden became the first sitting U.S. president to join a picket line when he visited striking United Auto Workers (UAW) members outside a GM parts facility in Belleville, Michigan.

“You guys, UAW, you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 and before. You made a lot of sacrifices, gave up a lot when the companies were in trouble,” the president said to picketing workers. ​“But now they’re doing incredibly well, and guess what? You should be doing incredibly well too.”

The president has voiced support for the UAW’s strike at the Big Three automakers since it began on September 15. But after former President Donald Trump announced plans to hold a campaign rally at a non-union auto parts plant near Detroit — which the media grossly mischaracterized as ​“Trump standing with striking autoworkers” — Biden was pushed by fellow Democrats to visit a UAW picket line.

As a candidate in 2019, Biden joined workers on picket lines, including striking GM employees. Candidate Bill Clinton also walked a picket line in 1992, as did candidate Barack Obama in 2007. But no president has ever joined a picket line while in office until today.

On the campaign trail, Obama promised workers that, if elected, he would ​“put on a comfortable pair of shoes” and ​“walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America” — a promise he never fulfilled. As Obama’s vice president, Biden rebuffed a request from Wisconsin labor leaders in 2011 to join their massive protest against Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s push to curtail public sector union rights. 

Biden’s UAW picket line visit reflects the fact that the strike by union workers is so popular that the leader of the most pro-capitalist country on Earth believed being seen standing alongside them was politically advantageous.

By Nick French - Jacobin, September 26, 2023

Today President Joe Biden traveled to Detroit to join members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) on the picket line in their strike against the Big Three automakers. The move was Biden’s strongest signal of support yet, after a number of more equivocal statements about the ongoing contract dispute. He is the first sitting US president in history to walk a picket line.

Biden’s transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, declared that Biden went to Detroit because he is “deeply pro-worker.” One might doubt Buttigieg’s assessment, given that — despite Biden’s admirably pro-labor National Labor Relations Board — the president intervened to stop railworkers from striking over eminently reasonable demands less than a year ago and has so far been content to fund a transition to electric vehicles (EVs) with little regard for workers. (Buttigieg himself went on to qualify his statement: the president, he says, wants “the auto sector to succeed as well” and is “pushing the parties to get to a win-win deal that does right by workers.”)

In any case, to look at Biden’s decision as simply reflecting his personal commitments is to miss the bigger picture. Biden is looking toward reelection, Michigan is a crucial swing state, and the president and his team almost certainly feel a trip to the UAW picket line will be a boon to his electoral odds. And considering union favorability is at an all-time high and a majority of Americans support the UAW walkout, they’d be right to think so.

By Jane Slaughter, LaShawn English, et. al. - Labor Notes, September 26, 2023