[Here’s what launched the militant union leader toward a
historic strike.]
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THE MOMENT IT ALL CHANGED FOR UAW PRESIDENT SHAWN FAIN  
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Steven Greenhouse
September 22, 2023
Politico
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_ Here’s what launched the militant union leader toward a historic
strike. _

Shawn Fain was known for his unremitting opposition to concessions, a
stance that has directly led to today’s walkout in which the UAW. ,
Matthew Hatcher/AFP via Getty Images

 

In 2007, Shawn Fain was a little-known union official at a Chrysler
plant in Kokomo, Indiana, having gone to work there a dozen years
before as an electrician. What happened next set Fain on the path to
where he is today: president of the UAW and the key figure in a
historic strike with no end in sight.

That year, Chrysler (now part of Stellantis) was sliding toward
bankruptcy and insisted that to avoid going under, it needed deep
concessions from the UAW, including sharply reduced starting pay and a
two-tier wage structure in which pay and benefits for future workers
would remain permanently below those of workers hired before
2007. The UAW’s leaders decided, unenthusiastically, to agree to
those concessions
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Ford and G.M. demanding similar provisions.

But Fain wasn’t ready to go along. As a committeeperson at Local
1166, he led his local union to vote against ratifying the contract.
It was a rare act of defiance from rank-and-file workers amid the
high-profile negotiations, and Fain wasn’t at all reluctant about
making his defiance public. He loudly denounced the givebacks at a
council meeting, saying, “Two-tier wages have no place in this union
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And in a letter to UAW leadership that reached the media, he said that
in approving those concessions, “you might as well get a gun and
shoot yourself in the head.
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It was a remarkable public break with his union’s leadership and an
important inflection point in Fain’s career.

With that defiant step, Fain declared his independence from the
political group — known as the Administration Caucus — that had
run the UAW for six decades. And the move also set him up for a higher
position — for years in staff jobs at UAW headquarters in Detroit,
then later to be catapulted into the union’s presidency.

Throughout, Fain was known for his unremitting opposition to
concessions, a stance that has directly led to today’s walkout in
which the UAW, for the first time ever, has struck all three Detroit
automakers at once. The strike has sent shock waves throughout the
auto industry, inspired workers across the U.S. and sent President Joe
Biden and former President Donald Trump rushing to demonstrate who can
show more support for the workers.

Fain, 54, had a bumpy ascent within the 400,000-member UAW. Sometimes
union leaders “moved him up in the hope of shutting him up,” said
one friend of Fain’s, Scott Houldieson, a Ford assembly plant worker
in Chicago and long-time UAW dissident. Other times UAW leaders grew
irate with Fain and demoted him. Fain’s official union biography
says, “Many times… he was ostracized for speaking up
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The UAW didn’t make him available for an interview.

Being a prominent dissident put Fain in a good position to run for
high union office after an embarrassing crisis hit the UAW in recent
years. Prosecutors unearthed a huge corruption scandal in which a
dozen UAW leaders
[[link removed].],
including two former presidents, were ultimately convicted of
embezzling more than $5 million in funds for luxury items and travel,
from hotels and golf trips to cigars and liquor.

Fain raised his hand to run for UAW president last year only after the
union’s members voted to hold direct elections for top UAW leaders
for the first time in the union’s history. That made it possible for
a dissident like Fain to have a chance to win, because the
Administration Caucus would no longer have total control over who
would be chosen president.

“After 75 years of iron-fisted rule by the Administration Caucus,
people were reluctant to step out and challenge the ruling group,”
said Houldieson. “Shawn had the courage to do that. Not many others
did.”

THERE’S SOMEWHAT OF A PARADOX to Fain. On one hand, Fain, a
blunt-talking and compelling speaker, comes across as a
traditionalist, talking of his God and faith and three grandparents
who worked in auto plants. He carries around an old, well-worn pay
stub from one grandfather who went to work for Chrysler in 1937, the
year of the famous sit-down strike that unionized G.M. At the same
time, Fain comes across as a militant, channeling Bernie Sanders as he
bashes “the billionaire class.” He sometimes quotes Malcolm X and
says “we have to be willing
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stand up and get our demands by any means necessary.”

Fain ran for UAW president as an insurgent, and one of his main
talking points was “no concessions.” Throughout his campaign, he
belittled previous UAW presidents for not being tough enough towards
the automakers.

After eking out a narrow victory in March, Fain promised that in this
summer’s contract talks with GM, Ford and Stellantis, he would
demand that they roll back some of the detested concessions dating to
2007, especially the two-tier pay structure.

Fain has repeatedly argued that at a time when Detroit’s automakers
have racked up record profits, they should reward their workers,
particularly because auto workers’ pay has fallen so far behind
inflation (by 19 percent since 2008, according to one think tank).

In making these arguments, Fain, like the legendary UAW leader Walter
Reuther who led the union from 1946 to 1970, has framed this fight as
one to help not just auto workers, but America’s entire working
class.

“We’re all fed up with living in a world
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values profits over people,” Fain said earlier this month.
“We’re all fed up with seeing the rich get richer while the rest
of us just continue to scrape by. We’re all fed up with corporate
greed and together, we’re going to fight like hell to change it.”

Also much like Reuther, Fain has roiled the White House
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times. He castigated Biden for not doing enough
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ensure that the new electric vehicle battery plants being built with
federal subsidies will pay high wages. Some Democrats have voiced
fears that Fain’s harsh words for Biden will push some UAW members
into backing Trump or staying home in November 2024.

“He’s taking a very militant line and acting very different from
past union presidents,” said Harry Katz, a professor and former dean
of the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “He tore up
a Chrysler contract offer and threw it in the trash. He benefits from
acting unpredictably. He keeps the companies off balance.”

After eking out a narrow victory in March, Fain promised that in this
summer’s contract talks with GM, Ford and Stellantis, he would
demand that they roll back some of the detested concessions dating to
2007, especially the two-tier pay structure.

Fain has repeatedly argued that at a time when Detroit’s automakers
have racked up record profits, they should reward their workers,
particularly because auto workers’ pay has fallen so far behind
inflation (by 19 percent since 2008, according to one think tank).

In making these arguments, Fain, like the legendary UAW leader Walter
Reuther who led the union from 1946 to 1970, has framed this fight as
one to help not just auto workers, but America’s entire working
class.

“We’re all fed up with living in a world
[[link removed]] that
values profits over people,” Fain said earlier this month.
“We’re all fed up with seeing the rich get richer while the rest
of us just continue to scrape by. We’re all fed up with corporate
greed and together, we’re going to fight like hell to change it.”

Also much like Reuther, Fain has roiled the White House
[[link removed]] at
times. He castigated Biden for not doing enough
[[link removed]] to
ensure that the new electric vehicle battery plants being built with
federal subsidies will pay high wages. Some Democrats have voiced
fears that Fain’s harsh words for Biden will push some UAW members
into backing Trump or staying home in November 2024.

“He’s taking a very militant line and acting very different from
past union presidents,” said Harry Katz, a professor and former dean
of the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “He tore up
a Chrysler contract offer and threw it in the trash. He benefits from
acting unpredictably. He keeps the companies off balance.”

United Auto Workers members, including President Shawn Fain, center,
march past General Motors headquarters in Detroit on Friday, Sept. 15,
2023. | Paul Sancya/AP Photo

“The very existence of billionaires shows us
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we have an economy that is working for the benefit of the few, and not
the many,” Fain said. “It feels like we’ve gone so far backwards
that we have to fight just to have the 40-hour workweek back. Why is
that? So another asshole can make enough money to shoot himself to the
moon?”

Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in
Detroit, said Fain deserves credit for changing the narrative about
workers and their role in the economy. “Going back decades, we’ve
approached negotiations as, ‘What can labor give to help us be
competitive?’” Masters said. “But with Fain, it’s more that
labor is entitled to its fair share and it’s time to address all the
inequality.”

THE UAW STRIKE HAS BEEN getting huge publicity and public support —
one poll found that 54 percent of Americans support the walkout
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while 18 percent oppose it.

That’s even as Fain has pushed a huge and ambitious list of demands:
raises of more than 40 percent, a cost-of-living adjustment, a 32-hour
workweek, ending the two-tier pay structure, restoring reduced pension
and health benefits, creating a jobs bank for laid-off workers, and
converting temporary workers to full employees with full benefits
after 90 days on the job.

“Shawn has been very tough to date. That has caught the companies
off guard,” said Harley Shaiken, a UC Berkeley professor and former
auto worker who attended a three-day bargaining strategy session that
Fain led.

While the automakers have blanched at Fain’s many proposals, saying
they’re exorbitantly expensive, some Fain supporters say he was
merely putting forward the demands that rank-and-file workers wanted.

Frustrated with Fain’s long list of demands, Ford CEO Jim Farley
said, “You want us to choose bankruptcy
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supporting our workers.”

Masters said that by making so many ambitious demands, “Fain may
have painted himself in a corner that he can’t get out of without
losing some face.” In other words, even if Fain wins, say, large
wage increases, a cost-of-living adjustment and an end to two tiers,
some union members might nonetheless be angry that he didn’t also
win on a 32-hour-workweek, improved pension benefits, a jobs bank and
improvements for temporary workers.

As for politics, it’s also possible Fain has fumbled things. He has
railed against Biden and said that his traditionally Democratic union
was withholding any endorsement from the president, at least for now
— moves that Fain hopes will pressure Biden to do more to ensure
high wages at new, federally subsidized battery plants. But some
longtime labor watchers fear that Fain’s harsh words and
non-endorsement will push some UAW members into Trump’s camp.

“It was a big mistake for Fain to criticize Biden so rudely and hold
off on endorsing,” Katz said. “Biden has been the most pro-union
president of our lifetime. I think Fain, by using that language, fuels
support for our fascist former president, and I’m scared about
that.”

Trump is trying to seize on the opportunity, saying he will go to
Detroit next week to speak to union members. In response, Fain laid
into Trump: “Every fiber of our union is being poured
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fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people
like Donald Trump at the expense of workers.”

Ultimately for Fain and his union, it all depends on how the strike
concludes.

“He can have a real victory here,” Shaiken said. “But there has
to be an end game, and nobody is clear on his end game.”

READ MORE: RECORD AUTO PROFITS SHOULD BE USED TO ADDRESS INEQUALITY
AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS BY UAW PRESIDENT SHAWN FAIN AND CONGRESSMAN RO
KHANNA
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_STEVEN GREENHOUSE, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, is a
former New York Times labor reporter and author of Beaten Down,
Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor._

_POLITICO is the global authority on the intersection of politics,
policy, and power. It is the most robust news operation and
information service in the world specializing in politics and policy,
which informs the most influential audience in the world with insight,
edge, and authority. Founded in 2007, POLITICO has grown to a team of
700 working across North America, more than half of whom are editorial
staff._

* UAW
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* Auto Workers
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* strike
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* Concessions
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* unions
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* corporate profits
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* Climate Crisis
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* Electric vehicles
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