When Sean Fein ran for president of the United Auto Workers last year, he ran on a promise: No concessions. There are no hierarchies. ”
The pledge encapsulated the frustration of many union members over years of union scandals and concessions made to Detroit’s three automakers, including creating low-wage quotas for new employees. The platform helped propel Fein to the top job. He has led a wave of strikes in recent weeks to demand more favorable contract terms.
But the platform existed long before Fein’s candidacy. It was devised by the group All Workers United for Democracy, which was formally formed in 2020 as a caucus, a political party within the trade unions.
The group sought to overthrow the ruling party, known as the Regime Presidium, which has run the union for more than 70 years. In 2022, the unity of all workers has set out the party’s policy, recruited candidates and intensified the campaign to elect them.
When the dust settled, he won half the seats on the union’s 14-member executive committee, and Fein, a former union official, became president. The role of “Unite All Workers” helps explain why unions have taken such a hard line against automakers.
“We have a platform that we’ve been operating on, and we’re looking to take that platform even further,” said Scott Holdison, the group’s founder and longtime Ford Motor Company employee in Chicago. “There is,” he said. “Sean was very upfront about what we were trying to accomplish.”
The first fruits of that approach may have emerged Wednesday when union and Ford negotiators agreed to terms on a new four-year contract that includes pay increases of about 25% over four years, the union said. be.
“We hit businesses with maximum impact,” Fein said on a Facebook livestream. The agreement must be approved by the company’s union members.
Since at least the 1980s, UAW members have formed groups to challenge union leaders, urging them to at least take a more confrontational stance with automakers. The effort took on added urgency in 2007, when unions embraced tiering as a way to stabilize automakers’ financial footing. (In any case, General Motors and Chrysler later filed for bankruptcy, but Ford avoided bankruptcy.)
However, the executive committee always had a trump card. Union leadership is not directly elected by union members. Rather, future leaders were effectively selected by existing leaders and then approved by delegates at a quadrennial convention.
That changed after a corruption scandal in 2020 in which two recent UAW presidents were indicted on embezzlement charges. As part of the consent decree with the federal government, members held a referendum on whether to elect union leaders directly. All workers united for change waged an all-out campaign to persuade union members to support “one member, one vote.”
When the initiative passed by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio, Unite All Workers, whose members pay annual dues, was poised to become something of a kingmaker in the 2022 union election. The group had a budget of more than $100,000, two full-time staff members and hundreds of volunteer organizers.
“It was obvious that we could use the same infrastructure” of staff and volunteers to campaign, said Mike Cannon, a former UAW member and All Workers United steering committee member. “The only question at that point was, were we going to have a candidate?”
All Workers United announced that anyone wishing to take part in the campaign will need to fill out a detailed questionnaire and attend at least one meeting with members.
The group wanted to ensure that the candidates it supported were committed to steering the union with broad input from rank-and-file members and pushing for tougher negotiations with employers. The company had called for abolishing wage tiers, which it said were dividing workers and hurting morale, and to focus on organizing new members, particularly among electric vehicle and battery workers.
Among those who answered the call was Mr. Fein, then an official in the union division responsible for Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram. During the interview process, Mr. Fain spoke about how, as a local government employee in Indiana, he led a movement against a two-tier pay structure agreed to by his union in 2007, and how he has offered more favorable contract terms since joining. He explained how he argued. Headquarters staff.
Some members of the group were skeptical that Old Guard employees could be reformers. However, other UAW dissidents vouched for his support. “We knew the claims were valid,” said Martha Grevatt, a member of the All Workers United steering committee and a longtime Chrysler employee.
The group endorsed 14 candidates for union office, including Mr. Fain and six others, all seven of whom won.
As president, Mr. Fein appointed critics of the previous leadership to his inner circle, including someone who served on the All Workers United Steering Committee. Board members, including Mr Fain, attended some of the group’s monthly membership meetings, and he participated in one of the WhatsApp chats.
Many of the group’s priorities have become demands in union contract negotiations, and Mr. Fein has used the momentum of the strike to secure non-union companies like Tesla and Honda, key targets for all workers to unite. He expressed his desire to organize.
However, despite the various connections between the groups and trade union leadership, they are not quite the same.
Some executives who have run as All Workers United candidates sometimes take positions that conflict with the group’s priorities. In recent weeks, Margaret Mock, the union’s second-ranking official, has expressed concerns to other executives about the impact of the strike on the union’s budget. At a special board meeting last week, he proposed a proposal aimed at cutting spending on organizing during strikes, according to two people familiar with the meeting. The board put the proposal on hold. Mock did not respond to requests for comment.
Unite All Workers, on the other hand, considers itself accountable to its rank-and-file members, rather than an extension of the leaders it helped elect. Under a tentative agreement with one of the three major automakers, Zenroren will appoint a special committee to provide its members with an evaluation of the proposal. Group members then decide whether to support it.
“I would say it’s not automatic for the caucus to approve the deal,” Andrew Bergman said. I am a member of the All Workers Unity Steering Committee.
Still, as a practical matter, the group is highly unlikely to oppose the deal, given Fein’s strong advocacy of its core priorities.
“For years, we have defended ourselves every step of the way, and we have continued to lose,” Fein said in a video posted online Friday, explaining the reason for the continued strike. “When we vote on a tentative agreement, it’s because your leadership and council believe we’ve earned absolutely every dollar we can.” This week, the union announced that Stellantis and The strike expanded to General Motors’ largest factory in the United States.
This approach has raised concerns among employers and business groups. John Drake, vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said Detroit automakers may struggle to remain competitive after the strike and that Fein appears to be going too far in extracting concessions. Stated.
“I feel like there’s really no strategy here,” Drake said. “It’s like the pain is the goal.”
The best metaphor for “all workers together” is Brand New, founded by supporters of Vermont independent progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders to help elect candidates for Congress starting in 2018. It’s probably a group called Congress.
Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Brand New Congress urged Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an unknown New York bartender and activist, to challenge the longtime incumbent in the Democratic Congressional primary. Her sister group provided her with training and campaign infrastructure. After she won, two people from the group joined her staff.
Since then, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has become much more visible than her early supporters, and can take positions that are, on principle, at odds with their progressive positions. But in reality that’s unlikely. The worldview is embedded in her political identity.
Mr. Fein’s story is similar. A once-unknown progressive was catapulted into power by a group of rebels, determined to enact their common principles once there. Apart from that, supporting him and his colleagues helped All Workers United not only win a few parliamentary seats, but also the reins of the trade union as a whole.
All Workers Unite steering committee member Bail Cornert-Yount endorsed Ms Fain’s candidacy for president at last year’s union conference, and then spoke to her about relying on government assistance as a new parent decades ago. talked.
“I remember thinking, “This person hasn’t forgotten where he came from. He’s always been that person,” Cornert Yount said. “We did our best to support candidates we believed in.”