Proposed Membership-approved Position: An Assessment of Fain’s Three Major Campaigns, Their Successes, Failures, and Top-down Nature

This resolution was passed at the August 2025 Special Membership Meeting via Zoom on August 3, 2025.

Whereas, our UAWD Member Platform, in the section titled “Political Independence,” commits us to the following principles:
  • “We must be committed to fighting bosses everywhere and maintaining independence from the UAW leadership to be able to criticize what it prioritizes. We must also remain independent of the two oligarchic, capitalist ruling parties in the US and work towards the creation of an independent workers party.”
  • “Political independence is important because fighting to advance the working class means we will be confronted by contradictions, corrupted structures, and constant attempts at coercion by interests undermining our cause … Even our allies in the leadership may be incentivized to use top-down methods to make damaging concessions in the short run and build alliances with others who repressively crack down on a class struggle rank-and-file movement.”
Whereas, our UAWD Member Platform further lays out the following political principle in the section titled “Membership solidarity, not “unity” imposed by union leadership”:
  • “We do not prize unity with particular leaders, caucuses, or groups as an end unto itself, we do not believe it is our obligation to be united in our strategy with every other member of our union … Before we take action, we also encourage a rich debate about the tactics and strategy, and we believe we will be stronger if we understand each other and convince one another of the best ideas, so that the broadest group of workers possible is brought into a collective strategy, fighting from the bottom up.”
Whereas, our UAWD Publication Charter allows for the adoption of “Membership-approved positions,” stating that “The UAWD membership may pass a motion that directly calls for publication of a piece, either with complete language, partial language, or by calling on the EB to write a piece communicating a position.” Whereas, the political analysis below takes the position that the Fain administration’s three major campaigns, with their successes and failures, continue a top-down approach, with limited member engagement, even when the campaigns had a more class struggle character. Whereas, the purpose of this political analysis isn’t to take a position ‘for’ or ‘against’ the Fain administration, or to debate the ultimate success of any particular campaign, but rather to show that these campaigns have had a top-down nature and generally lacked a bottom-up approach. Be it resolved, the UAWD membership adopts the analysis below as a membership-approved position and that the Editorial Board (EB) shall write, as a whole or by tasking EB members, an article to take this position in the first batch of articles released as part of the publication. Be it further resolved, that, while the title, specific language, and style of the article shall be determined by the EB and any specific EB authors, the article shall clearly reflect the membership-approved position below and present an honest assessment of both the successes and failures of the Fain administration’s key campaigns. Be it further resolved, that it is understood that this is an analysis of one aspect of the current leadership’s shortcomings, it is not a definitive or holistic assessment of such, as that would require broader membership discussion. Be it further resolved, that, UAWD is not committed to endorsing or allying with campaigns to undermine President Fain’s leadership, especially those of a counterproductive or right-wing character. Membership-approved position: An Assessment of Fain’s Three Major Campaigns, Their Successes, Failures, and Top-down Nature The language below is not being proposed as an article for publication, it is an analytical description that provides a basis for an editorial, as described in the resolution above. During the first two years Shawn Fain’s presidency of the UAW, beginning in early 2023, he has carried out three prominent public-facing campaigns that have held significance for auto workers across the country and the broader working class:
  • The Stand Up Strike: a 2023 contract campaign against the Big 3 US automakers (Ford, GM, and Stellantis), which involved striking select facilities instead company-wide shutdowns;
  • Keep the Promise Stellantis: a 2024 campaign to organize Stellantis workers to build a strike threat against Stellantis for failing to meet their contract commitments to restart closed assembly facilities;
  • The Harris campaign: a 2024 campaign to organize UAW members to support and vote for Democratic party candidate Kamala Harris in the US Presidential Election that year.
  • The work and scope of the Fain administration have spanned well beyond these three campaigns, including important efforts to organize auto plants in the South and fight contract campaigns in the heavy truck sector, as well as internal reform efforts. But none of these efforts had the same kind of significance as these three key campaigns in how our union attempts to confront the ruling political and capitalist class.
While these three campaigns vary widely in their scope, purpose, and working class character, what ultimately ties them together is their top-down nature. 
  • The Stand Up Strike and Keep the Promise campaigns were militant campaigns that won real material gains for UAW members and went beyond the scope and scale of what prior Administration Caucus leadership had endeavored.
  • But even these campaigns, which had a class struggle character, were directed from the top with limited rank-and-file input.
  The Stand Up Strike
  • The Stand Up Strike practiced a new type of militancy, coordinating walk outs at each of the Big 3 at the same time, but not all at once, with the union leadership determining the specific facilities that would go on strike based on their tactical assessments.
    • The Fain administration’s stated goal in utilizing this new strategy was to increase the union’s leverage in contract negotiations by organizing a joint strike and creating a credible threat of long-term disruption by conserving strike resources.
    • Even at the end when those working at all three automakers went on strike, it was not the largest strike of Big 3 workers in history. The 50,000 workers from the three automakers who were all on strike together for a brief period at the end of the strike is a similar number to the GM workers who were on strike in 2019 for a longer period.
    • Leadership hailed the wins resulting from their tactics, but, from some members’ standpoint, the significant size of the unused strike fund could have been used for a more militant strike and possibly resulted in an improved agreement. 
    • Many Big 3 workers described frustration and confusion early in the strike, as they expected to walk out along with all workers from their company, in line with past strike strategies.
    • Other workers described feeling distant from the strike, as they were told by top leadership to continue working and could not act in solidarity with union siblings who had walked out.
    • This is an example of a strategy that had merits, and certainly meant the UAW strike fund would be used less quickly, but was also not collectively decided by the membership, or even determined with membership input.
  • The Stand Up Strike was carried out only several months after Fain came into office, making the timeline challenging for engaging the membership in strike strategy or priority-setting.
    • But it would certainly have been possible to hold mass town halls in key cities to discuss strike strategy, get membership buy-in, and learn from the members.
    • As Fain was launching a new bargaining tactic, this would have set an important democratic precedent for this kind of engagement and put the idea of voting on strike strategy on the map for future contract campaigns.
  • The contract negotiations with the Big 3 were conducted in a more transparent way than  before, with regular Facebook Live updates given during the early weeks of the strike. However, that transparency fell off as the strike proceeded, with fewer and less detailed updates.
    • Ultimately, tentative agreements were agreed to at a time when the vast majority of Big 3 workers were still not on strike, even after overwhelming votes to authorize strikes.
    • The tentative agreements were framed in a misleadingly positive light. Core loopholes, such as the fact that the new 9 month timelines for temporary worker conversion could be reset with short layoffs, were omitted in their communication to members, leading to growing worker dissatisfaction and sense of betrayal as the contracts have been lived in and better understood.
    • While Fain did not publicly strong-arm the passage of his tentative agreements, departing from the repressive practices of his Administration Caucus predecessors, he did clearly sell the contracts with a rosy framing that was not in line with reality, inconsistent with his earlier commitment to transparency and even-handedness.
    • Had he provided a more balanced perspective and been more honest about the shortfalls of the agreed-upon terms, and stated to members that there may have been more to win if they wanted to keep fighting, the process would’ve been more democratic and might have resulted in a surge of collective militancy, especially given the fact that GM workers came close to continuing their strike, approving their agreement with just 54.7% of the vote.
  Keep the Promise Stellantis
  • Keep the Promise Stellantis, while the least prominent of the three campaigns due to its comparatively limited size and outcomes, is the most compelling from a class struggle unionist perspective.
  • Building a strike threat to challenge a major corporation’s failure to meet contractual commitment to restart an assembly facility is a genuine example of workers exerting control over capital, and it sets a significant example for how the working class can fight multinational corporations.
  • But it lacked a commitment to really engage with workers in the strike process and respond to how workers felt on the shop floor, which included their widespread lack of familiarity with a non-contract expiration strike and fatigue from the recent Stand Up Strike.
  • Many UAWD members described their personal enthusiasm about the Keep the Promise campaign, while at the same time observing a widening disconnect between UAW staff who were enthusiastically pushing the idea to the membership and the Stellantis workers who felt that their questions and concerns were unheard and their opinions ignored.
  • This rank-and-file alienation from the union bureaucracy led to the delay of strike authorization votes that were scheduled at many large assembly plants, ultimately leading the campaign to stall.
  • The result was a partial win for workers. The company re-committed to their initial 2027 timeline of launching a midsize truck at the Belvidere factory, bringing back 1,500 jobs if the plan isn’t reversed again, and the company also held to keeping Durango production in Detroit. However, significant contractually-obligated investments were also dropped, as Stellantis cancelled plans for a battery plant in Belvidere and megahub for parts distribution slated to create thousands more jobs in 2028. 
  The Harris campaign
  • The UAW leadership’s decision to endorse Kamala Harris’ 2024 Presidential campaign certainly did not have a class struggle character, given the campaign’s close relationship with corporations and the capitalist class.
  • The decision about if and how to support a US presidential candidate is an even clearer example of what could have been directly subordinated to a referendum of the UAW membership. With over a year to plan after he came into office, Fain could have put together mass town halls to get worker input, and he could have conducted a membership-wide referendum, allowing UAW members to choose between endorsing the Democrat, the Republican, or neither. Effective political education is necessary for members to understand that neither of the two major capitalist parties represents the working class. 
  • When Shawn Fain appeared at the Democratic National Convention and said “Kamala Harris is one of us,” implying her support for the working class, he lost the confidence of many UAW members across the political spectrum who knew she represented the ruling political and corporate elite, even if they chose to vote for her as the lesser of two evils. 
  • Many UAW members from across the political spectrum might have respected both the UAW leadership and the UAW as a whole if they, as workers, had had the opportunity to debate and engage in collective decision-making about who the UAW would endorse for the US President, even if their perspective ultimately lost out.
  • And the raising of political consciousness through the debate would have been crucial for building support for an independent working-class party alternative to the Democrats and the Republicans, something many UAW members see as the only viable political future for this country.