Abolish Forced Overtime
UAWD Amendment for
the 2026 UAW Constitutional Convention
Abolish Forced Overtime
Amendment to Article 19
Forced overtime robs workers of our waking lives and is a powerful mechanism of profit extraction and discipline and control. Workers have the power to fight against forced OT and define the productive process on our shop floors.
Amendment Summary
Be it resolved that Article 19 shall be amended by adding a new section:
The UAW, including the International union and any Local union, shall not agree to a collective bargaining agreement with an employer that mandates overtime work. Any agreement, new or renegotiated, must:
- prohibit the employer from forcing members to work more than a standard full-time workweek;
- mandate that all overtime offered must be voluntary;
- mandate that employers must recall all laid-off members company-wide before offering overtime;
- allow for individual and collective refusal of overtime.
Background
- Forced overtime is a strategy focused on extracting more and more labor from fewer workers, giving our bosses the ability to eliminate shifts and throw workers off the job with mass layoffs without negatively impacting their production and profit.
- Forced overtime also acts as a system of control and discipline, pushing workers into extreme exhaustion. Exhausted and overworked UAW members have less time for their families, meaningful participation in their community, and active engagement with shop floor struggles and the collective political power of our union.
- Commuting under such grinding conditions has led to deadly car crashes, workers who were clear victims of capitalist business owners, who do not care at all about the conditions they create while endlessly seeking greater and greater profit.
- Many UAW contracts currently permit management to implement forced overtime for any and all workers without limits, a total failure of decades of concessionary business unionism.
A CLASS STRUGGLE APPROACH
- Workers should be the ones in control of the conditions of production. Fighting against mandatory overtime is one step toward shop floor control by the people actually carrying out the labor that produces so much profit for the ruling class.
- Ending forced overtime requires a wide political program of rank-and-file education, democratic engagement at various stages of an escalatory campaign, and material support from UAW to protect workers who engage in militant activity and work-to-rule efforts that chip away at management’s control over our working days.
- Ending forced overtime has a variety of knock-on effects that provide a variety of benefits for other workers. No forced OT means fewer layoffs, more guaranteed jobs and shifts, more wages pulled from the profits of capitalists, and more free time available for political organizing.
OPPOSITION FROM MANAGEMENT AND UAW BUREAUCRATS
- Management will fight tooth and nail to preserve their right to force us into 80 and 90 work weeks. One argument that will influence a lot of our members is a threat that an end to forced OT means an end to ALL OT. This is not the case. OT will still be provided to workers who opt-in, ending forced OT just pulls that decision into our hands and out of the hands of the owning class.
- Conservative stewards, staff and executives in UAW will not carry up this struggle, as it would threaten the tenets of “labor peace” that guide so many concessionary and corrupt bargaining practices around the country. Fighting for an end to forced OT in our contracts will require democratic strategies that are capable of standing up against bureaucratic roadblocks during the bargaining campaign. Holding town halls, educational efforts, flyering, building the buy-in for a strike specifically to end forced OT is the only way it can be won until the UAW as a whole is on a more class-struggle oriented path.
