#united auto workers uaw

[iww-gnv]

WASHINGTON, Nov 29 (Reuters) - The United Auto Workers union said on Wednesday it is launching a first-of-its-kind push to publicly organize the entire nonunion auto sector in the U.S. after winning new contracts with the Detroit Three automakers. The Detroit-based UAW said workers at 13 nonunion automakers were announcing simultaneous campaigns across the country to join the union, including at Tesla (TSLA.O), Toyota (7203.T), Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), Hyundai (005380.KS), Rivian (RIVN.O), Nissan (7201.T), BMW (BMWG.DE) and Mercedes-Benz (MBGn.DE). Those automakers employ nearly 150,000 workers at their U.S. assembly plants, about the same number as those employed by the Detroit Three companies with which the UAW just signed new labor agreements, the union said. "To all the auto workers out there working without the benefits of a union, now it's your turn," UAW President Shawn Fain said in a video posted on a website urging auto workers to sign electronic cards seeking union representation. "The money is there. The time is right," he added. "You don’t have to worry about how you’re going to pay your rent or feed your family while the company makes billions. A better life is out there."

#news #us news #uspol #us pol #washington #united auto workers #uaw #shawn fain #detroit three #detroit #united auto workers uaw

[probablyasocialecologist]

Striking autoworkers tricked the “Big 3” corporations into thinking strike would be taking place at incorrect locations, foiling their anti-strike preparations and inflicting financial damage.

#UAW #united auto workers #uaw strike

[kropotkindersurprise]

September 22, 2023 - A racist right-winger thought it was a good idea to drive past a UAW picket line of striking auto workers and start yellilng racial slurs at them, at the Stellantis plant in Center Line, Michigan. He quickly found out it wasn't. [video]

#UAW #united auto workers #antifa #antifascism #antifascist action #strike #industrial action #unions #direct action #picket line #gif #2023 #michigan #center line #usa #working class #workers #karma #solidarity

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Paul Blest at More Perfect Union:

Thousands of workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee have voted to join the United Auto Workers, defying an all-out union-busting effort from the state’s political leaders and marking a key victory for the United Auto Workers in their renewed effort to organize the South and non-union plants.

Unofficial results tallied Friday showed that after three days of voting, more than two-thirds of workers voted to join the UAW. The win in Chattanooga is the first successful attempt to organize a non-union automaker in decades and comes after multiple failed attempts to organize the plant, including in 2014 and 2019. More than 4,300 workers were eligible to vote this week.  “I can't explain it. It's not like the first times,” Renee Berry, who has worked at the Chattanooga plant for 14 years and through two prior facility-wide votes, told us in the lead-up to the election. “The first few times was hell…now it's like we can roll our shoulders back, because we got it.”  Volkswagen is the world’s largest auto company by revenue, and until today, every one of its plants around the globe has been unionized except for one.

"This is going to be in history books down the road. This is huge—forever huge,” Robert Soderstrom, a worker at the plant, told More Perfect Union. “People recognize for the first time in a long time, on a mass scale, that there's got to be some changes. And some of the power and stuff that's gone to the corporate world needs to come back to us little guys.” The victory in Tennessee continues a winning streak for the UAW, which negotiated record contracts at the Detroit Three of Ford, GM, and Stellantis last year following a lengthy “stand-up” strike. After passing the contracts, UAW President Shawn Fain announced a $40 million effort to organize non-union U.S. plants, largely based in right-to-work states like Tennessee and owned by auto companies based in Europe, Japan, and South Korea, as well as EV manufacturers like Tesla and Rivian. 

Since launching that new effort, more than 10,000 autoworkers around the country have signed union cards, according to the UAW. Earlier this month, workers at a Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama became the second group to file for an election, which will be held from May 13 to 17. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and the state Chamber of Commerce have forcefully opposed the unionization effort, claiming it would hurt Alabama autoworkers—who, even before the pandemic, were making less than they did in 2002 when adjusted for inflation. The same dynamic has played out in Tennessee. Gov. Bill Lee, who denounced the last unsuccessful union campaign in 2019, said it would be a “mistake” for workers at the Chattanooga plant to unionize and boasted about the state’s “right-to-work” law. 

🚨🚨 BREAKING:🚨🚨 Workers at the Volkswagen (VW) plant in Chattanooga have voted yes to join the United Auto Workers (UAW) after 2 failed attempts in 2014 and 2019. #UAW #VWChattanooga #1u

#Unionizaion #Unions #Labor #Labor Unions #Workers' Rights #VW Chattanooga #Chattanooga Tennessee #US News #Chattanooga #UAW #United Auto Workers #Volkswagen #VW #UAW Strike

[decolonize-the-left]

United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain lambasted the mass arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses across the country, while emphasizing the union’s call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. “The UAW will never support the mass arrest or intimidation of those exercising their right to protest, strike, or speak out against injustice,” Fain wrote Wednesday on the social platform X. “Our union has been calling for a ceasefire for six months. This war is wrong, and this response against students and academic workers, many of them UAW members, is wrong.”

Hundreds of students and faculty members have been arrested over the past two weeks as pro-Palestinian protests roil college campuses nationwide. Demonstrators have taken to university yards and streets and started encampments to protest Israel’s wartime campaign in Gaza and call for a halt in U.S. aid to Israel. Tensions spiked in New York and California on Tuesday night, resulting in the arrest of hundreds of demonstrators. The New York Police Department on Tuesday went through a second-story window of a building at Columbia that was seized by demonstrators. Police cleared out the protesters, and videos quickly circulated on social media showing the arrests at Columbia, which has served as ground zero for the mass college protests that have quickly spread across the country.

New York Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday confirmed around 300 people were arrested. At the University of California, Los Angeles, counter-protesters clashed with pro-Palestinian demonstrators when they attempted to dismantle the encampment on that campus. Los Angeles Police Department officers responded, but it was not immediately clear how many arrests were made and whether there were any injuries. The leadership at UAW 4811, the union chapter representing postdoctoral scholars and researchers of the University of California campuses, voted on Wednesday to hold a strike authorization vote as early as next week should the “circumstances justify.”

“Should the university decide to curtail the right to participate in protected, concerted activity; discriminate against union members or political viewpoints; and create or allow threats to members’ health and safety, among others, UAW 4811 members will take any and all actions necessary to enforce our rights,” UAW 4811 wrote in a statement. Fain on Wednesday said the UAW is calling for the release of students and employees. “And If you can’t take the outcry, stop supporting this war,” Fain added. The UAW backed a long-term cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war in December. The war has lasted nearly seven months since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks against southern Israel, during which the militant group killed about 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage. Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.

#UAW #university encampments #ucla #columbia #united auto workers #unions #free palestine #end the occupation #Palestine #usa #protests #strike #uaw strike

[socialjusticeinamerica]

👏

#labor unions #organized labor #collective bargaining #volkswagen #UAW #united auto workers #republicans bust unions #democrats support unions #unions built this country #worker protections stem from organized labor fighting and shedding blood

[reasonsforhope]

Seven thousand more UAW members just walked off the job, expanding the strike to two more plants. Twenty-five thousand autoworkers are now on strike, and the walkout could continue to escalate if the Big Three don’t budge in negotiations.

[UAW president Shawn] Fain announced that Stellantis would be spared this time. The union had been expected to strike all three companies, but, said Region 1 director LaShawn English, three minutes before Fain was scheduled to go on Facebook Live, the UAW received frantic emails from company representatives.

[Note: Love that for the UAW. Also laughing so hard. Three minutes before the next round of strikes were annouced!!]

According to Fain, Stellantis made “significant progress” on cost-of-living allowances, the right not to cross a picket line, and the right to strike over product commitments and plant closures. “We are excited about this momentum at Stellantis and hope it continues,” Fain said...

“See You Next Week — Maybe?”

“These guys wanted to go out a long time ago,” said Cody Zaremba, a Local 602 member at the Lansing GM plant after the news broke that his plant would be joining the strike. “We’re ready. Everybody, truly, I believe, in the entire membership. They’re one with what’s going on.”

Five thousand workers at thirty-eight parts distribution centers across twenty-one states have been on strike since last Friday [September 22, 2023], along with thirteen thousand at three assembly plants in Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri who walked out on September 15. (See a map of all struck facilities here.) ...

The UAW is now calling on community supporters to organize small teams to canvass dealerships that sell and repair Big Three cars and trucks. On Tuesday, the union issued a canvassing tool kit with instructions, flyers, press releases, and talking points.

In negotiations with Ford and GM, autoworkers have clinched some important gains. Among them is an agreement by both companies to end at least one of the many tiers in current contracts, putting workers at certain parts plants back on the same wage scale as assembly workers. The top rate for Big Three assembly workers is currently around $32...

Ford was spared in last week’s escalation, because bargainers there had made further progress on gains for workers.

But today, the UAW once again called out workers at Ford and GM, putting some muscle behind its bold demands — a big wage boost, a shorter workweek, elimination of tiers, cost-of-living adjustments tied to inflation, protection from plant closures, conversion of temps to permanent employees, and the restoration of retiree health care and benefit-defined pensions to all workers.

-via Jacobin, September 29, 2023. Article continues below.

Keep Them Guessing

This year, for the first time in recent history, the union has played the three auto companies against each other with its strike strategy, departing from the union’s tradition of choosing one target company and patterning an agreement at the other two.

The stand-up strike strategy draws inspiration from an approach known as CHAOS (Create Havoc Around Our System), first deployed in 1993 by Alaska Airlines flight attendants, who announced they would be striking random flights. Although they struck only seven flights in a two-month period, Alaska had to send scabs on every plane, just in case. The unpredictability drew enormous media attention and drove management up the wall. Meanwhile the union was able to conserve its strength and minimize risk.

The companies miscalculated where the UAW was going to strike first, stockpiling engines and shipping them cross-country to the wrong facilities. Autoworkers relished the self-inflicted supply chain chaos on UAW Facebook groups and other social media platforms.

Nonstrikers’ morale on the factory floor has gotten a boost from rank and filers organizing to refuse voluntary overtime. With support both from Fain and the reform caucus Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), workers have been encouraging each other to “Eight and Skate,” meaning to turn down extra work and decline to do management any favors.

Majority Public Support

A majority of Americans support the UAW strikers, and the Big Three have taken a PR hit since the strike began, according to a new survey conducted by the business intelligence firm Caliber.

“Eighty-seven percent of respondents told us they were aware of the strike,” Caliber CEO Shahar Silbershatz told the Intercept. “It’s clear the strike is not just causing commercial repercussions, but reputational repercussions as well.”

These reputational repercussions will only worsen...

"We Can Unmake It"

Fain didn't pull any punches in his speech... “That’s what’s different about working-class people. Whether we’re building cars or trucks or running parts distribution centers; whether we’re writing movies or performing TV shows... we do the heavy lifting. We do the real work. Not the CEOs, not the executives.

"And though we don’t know it, that’s what power is. We have the power. The world is of our making. The economy is of our making. This industry is of our making.

“And as we’ve shown, when we withhold our labor, we can unmake it.”

-via Jacobin, September 29, 2023

#united states #us politics #organized labor #uaw #uaw strike #united auto workers #auto workers #labor rights #uaw strong #worker rights #unions #labor unions #strike #unionize #auto industry #ford #general motors #stellantis #working class #cars #michigan #ohio #missouri #solidarity forever #hot labor summer

[batboyblog]

For the first time, ever, a sitting American President has joined a picket line of striking Union Workers. President Joe Biden was invited by the United Auto Worker's President Shawn Fain (standing behind Biden in the picture) to address the striking workers at GM warehouse in Michigan.

#Joe Biden #Democrats #Unions #uaw strike #united auto workers #politics #this is a holy shit moment #those of us in politics really never thought we'd see it #for 50+ years Democrats have been scared of being too pro-union #today a Democratic President was on the picket line

[cyarskaren52]

the wga, culinary workers, the united auto workers union, and now sag-aftra. The unions just keep winning this year

unions work

GIF by choicesraccoon

#sag aftra #wga #culinary workers union #wga strike #sag strike #writers strike #actors strike #Unions #worker solidarity #labor rights #strikes #workers rights #labor unions #United auto workers #general motors #uaw #stellantis #shawn fain #uaw strike

[cyarsk5230]

the wga, culinary workers, the united auto workers union, and now sag-aftra. The unions just keep winning this year

unions work

#sag aftra #wga #culinary workers union #wga strike #sag strike #writers strike #actors strike #Unions #worker solidarity #labor rights #strikes #workers rights #labor unions #United auto workers #general motors #uaw #stellantis #shawn fain #uaw strike

[nando161mando]

#uaw strike #uaw #united auto workers #cnn news #cnn tonight #cnn arabic #cnnslot #cnn #business news #breaking news #crypto news #newsies #news #newspaper #class war #eat the rich #eat the fucking rich #ausgov #politas #auspol #tasgov #taspol #australia #fuck neoliberals #neoliberal capitalism #anthony albanese #albanese government #fuck the gop #fuck the police #fuck the supreme court

[iww-gnv]

DETROIT/WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Leaders of the United Auto Workers signaled the next step in their campaign to capitalize on the union's success in bargaining with the Detroit Three: launching organizing drives at Toyota (7203.T), Tesla (TSLA.O) and other nonunion U.S. auto factories. "What could @Toyota workers win if they joined the #StandUpUAW campaign?" UAW organizing director Brian O. Shepherd posted on social media on Wednesday, commenting after Toyota agreed to boost wages for U.S. workers by 9%, and to cut in half the time it takes new hires to reach the top pay rate. Other foreign automakers are reviewing recent auto-sector wage hikes. Honda (7267.T) told Reuters it is evaluating the recent UAW deals with the Detroit Three automakers and will remain competitive. UAW President Shawn Fain is expected to deliver a video address at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) on Thursday to outline details of the union's new contract with Stellantis (STLAM.MI).

#news #us news #us pol #uspol #detroit #washington #united auto workers #uaw #uaw strike #shawn fain #united auto workers uaw #united auto workers strike

[probablyasocialecologist]

#uaw #united auto workers #strike #usa

[tomorrowusa]

Shawn Fain, head of the UAW, led in 2023 what is arguably the most successful strike in the US this century.

He spoke at a Senate committee hearing about lazy freeloaders who live off the labor of others. Yes, he stuck it to Wall Street vampires and the mega rich who are usually big contributors to Republican candidates. When Republicans are in power, one of the first things they do is approve massive tax breaks for those massively wealthy contributors.

The GOP is big on reducing the rights of workers, eliminating Medicaid and Social Security, and opposing the minimum wage. Given clueless recent Republican comments on slavery, they are probably open to bringing back that institution in some form.

A reminder that last month the UAW endorsed President Joe Biden.

UAW's Shawn Fain says union will 'fight like hell' for President Joe Biden

#shawn fain #uaw #united auto workers #freeloading billionaires #the filthy rich #wall street freeloaders #passive income #wealth inequality #the income gap #election 2024 #joe biden #vote blue no matter who

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dave Jamieson at HuffPost:

Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama have voted against joining the United Auto Workers, a setback for the union as it tries to organize the auto industry in the South. The vote count at the German manufacturer’s facilities in Vance, near Tuscaloosa, was 2,045 to 2,642 against the union, according to a preliminary tally from the National Labor Relations Board. More than 5,000 workers were eligible to cast ballots in the weeklong election that ended Friday. The union has a week to challenge the results.

The UAW was coming off a historic victory at Volkswagen’s Tennessee plant last month, where workers had voted overwhelmingly in favor of unionization. But the loss at Mercedes could slow the union’s plans to organize more foreign-owned auto facilities in Southern states. UAW President Shawn Fain said in a press conference following the results that the union and its supporters had “left everything on the table.” “While this loss stings, I’ll tell you this: We’re gonna keep our heads up,” Fain said. “We fought the good fight and we’re going to continue forward. Ultimately, these workers here are going to win.” Mercedes thanked employees for voting in a statement following the election. “Our goal throughout this process was to ensure every eligible Team Member had the opportunity to participate in a fair election,” the company said.

[...] The UAW has long represented auto workers at the “Big Three” of Ford, General Motors and Jeep parent company Stellantis, primarily in the Midwest. But over the years, foreign manufacturers like Mercedes, Volkswagen, Nissan and Hyundai have established factories in the South to take advantage of lower wages and “right to work” laws, reducing the UAW’s density across the industry. Organizing those plants is key to the UAW restoring its once-formidable bargaining power, and to boosting wages and benefits in Southern facilities that lag behind unionized plants.

Sad news in Alabama: The UAW lost the vote to unionize the Vance, AL Mercedes-Benz plant 2,642 to 2,045.

#Unions #Labor #Unionization #UAW #United Auto Workers #Mercedes Benz #Mercedes Benz Vance #Vance Alabama #Alabama

[decolonize-the-left]

GENERAL STRIKE TIME BABEY. READ THE WHOLE POST.

While we're all mad at government sending money to Israel that police budgets are so inflated because of how often they pay settlements.

And also that it's a verified fact that our police train with Israeli soldiers. Remember when they were black bagging people in PDX? It reminded me of this ex-Israeli soldier talking about how they'd do the same thing to innocent Palestinians just to terrorize them and their neighbors. It was intentional terrorism when they did it.

Police budgets pay for all that.

Correction, we pay.

To put it more bluntly,

We pay for them to kill and terrorize people.

Just as our taxes pay for the deaths of Black and Brown people all over the world from Turtle Island to Sudan and Palestine.

In Dec. 2022, Louisville Metro Government agreed to pay Walker $2 million to settle lawsuits against the city. Metro government previously paid a $12 million settlement to Taylor’s family in Sept. 2020

We paid for Breonna Taylor's death.

And her murderers were never arrested btw. Not that there aren't still people trying to arrest them of course. But our money paid for their lawyers and wouldn't you know it, no charges have stuck.

Four years to the day after Breonna Taylor’s death, federal prosecutors are moving forward with a re-trial of one of the officers involved in the botched raid that ended her life. At a status conference Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings scheduled Brett Hankison’s final pre-trial hearing for September 13th. His re-trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 15. In November of last year, Hankinson was tried for violating the Constitutional rights of Breonna Taylor, her boyfriend, and three neighbors when he fired through two covered windows during the raid. Prosecutors argued he used excessive force when he shot into the apartment complex blindly. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, had fired at officers executing the search, claiming he thought they were intruders.

And Myles Cosgrove?

Yeah we're paying him to terrorize more people. He got a job as a fucking sheriff's deputy.

Myles Cosgrove, the former Louisville police officer, who was fired for fatally shooting Breonna Taylor in a botched 2020 police raid and hired earlier this year as a sheriff’s deputy in Carroll County, rammed a resident’s truck with his cruiser Monday and then pointed a gun at the owner and several bystanders, witnesses said.

Witnesses told The Courier Journal that Cosgrove barreled into Happy Hollow Private Resort Park trailer park at a high rate of speed without his emergency lights on, then struck William Joshua Short’s pickup truck with such force that it sent the vehicle flying into a building, breaking off two cinder blocks.

And Johnathan Mattingly wrote a fucking book about it to make money off of his role in her murder. $15 on Amazon.

He also wanted to sue Kenneth Walker, Breonna's boyfriend. You know why? For damages and injuries he sustained while killing Breonna Taylor.

WE PAID FOR ALL THAT. ALL OF IT.

Our power is in our dollar.

American politics and officials don't care for our lives. It's why they're content to watch us protest for months. Because we're still going to work. We are the worker ants simply fulfilling our duty, receiving the bare minimum to survive for our labor.

We're still building their bombs. Paying our taxes, so much that hardly any of us could afford more than rent.

We are just drones fulfilling our purpose to the upper class who doesn't give a shit about us beyond what we do for them and how little we will do it for.

If we want change we're gonna have to stop working. We're going to have to deprive them of products they sell, of our taxes, of our low cost labor.

And the strike that UAW is planning in May 2028 has inspired a lot of others to start looking at the opportunity to join in.

If you haven't heard of it yet, a strike is when workers organize and stop showing up for work. And a general strike is a mass strike across various industries around similar demands or bargaining positions.

There have been multiple calls for a general strike since then, predominantly from individuals and groups on social media, which has often resulted in confusion about what a general strike would actually look like. To be clear, a general strike is not a protest or a rally, a single picket line, or a boycott. It is, as I’ve previously defined, “a labor action in which a significant number of workers from a number of different industries who comprise a majority of the total labor force within a particular city, region, or country come together to take collective action.”

Throughout history, workers have used this tactic as a nuclear option to shut down entire cities when needed, including Philadelphia in 1835, Seattle in 1919, and beyond.[...]

If even four or five of the unions representing the workers mentioned above banded together in a nationwide general strike, the entire country would grind to a halt. When Shawn Fain asks his fellow unions to set the timer for May 2028, what he’s really saying is, get ready to shut sh*t down and level the playing field between bosses and workers once and for all.

JOIN A UNION. AND TALK ABOUT THIS.

And make one of the demands out to be an end of American support to countries participating in apartheid and genocide.

End the taxes for police budgets and settlements. If they want police departments so bad then they should FIND funding for themselves like the government makes USPS do.

One of the biggest pushbacks we hear is that there is never any official backing for calls to a general strike. Well here it is! Make sure you tell EVERYONE

This could be a global strike if other countries choose to participate on the same date

No, I don't think Palestine has 3 years so in the mean time join a union, keep protesting, start rioting, answer Every call to action coming from a Palestine and Sudan and the DRC and sign this strike card

#workers rights #workers party #general strike #strike #leftist #communist #anarchist #end the occupation #end the genocide #abolish the police #class war #no war but class war #2028 #UAW strike #united auto workers #may 2028 #may day #solidarity #classism #capitalism #biden #current events #new