We must fight for control of production on the shop floor and across the supply chain, pushing far beyond the legally mandated subjects of bargaining. This includes waging fights over shop floor issues, how discipline is carried out and our schedules, as well as workplace- and economy-wide issues, like controlling the products we make and how the raw materials we need to make them are sourced. We believe contracts can constrain workers as much as they can support them, and we believe contracts should be a minimum to fight beyond, not a ceiling. 

There are those who believe that all we need to get back what we’ve lost through decades of concessions is “another Walter Reuther.” While this viewpoint is understandable, given how much has been taken away since 1970, the reality is more complex. The 1950 Treaty of Detroit, the cornerstone of Walter Reuther’s legacy, began the period of labor bureaucrats accepting corporate-labor peace and calling for improved corporate profitability in exchange for substantial, but ultimately in the long-run diminishing, economic gains. When the UAW agreed to the Treaty of Detroit, leadership also dropped the fight for a shorter work week. In evaluating a contract, we must consider all of its aspects — not just wages and benefits, but the language that will define the level, and the methods, of exploitation in the workplace itself, including prioritizing the fight against “management rights” clauses.

Ultimately, achieving worker control will require transitioning production away from the profit motive and toward democratic industrial planning by workers and communities. This is true across industries and workplaces: A worker-led transition in the academy is needed to chart a path away from austerity and towards sustainable universities that value students and workers, just as a worker-led transition away from fossil fuels and toward clean and safe energy and transportation is needed to ensure global climate justice and peace for the international working class.

In addition to repealing the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, the goal of which was to defang the labor movement, we believe we must roll back the Treaty of Detroit’s legacy of suppressing worker militancy and the demand for worker control. 

We must build deeply organized rank-and-file-led unions that are ready to take collective action to win fights against the ruling class. Drawing from the legacy of auto worker militancy during the Sit Down Strikes of the 30s and by the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in the late 60s, this includes endorsing the tactical use of wildcat strikes when they are called for by large groups of rank-and-file members, who are ready to act without contractual or NLRB protections and with or without the support of the top UAW leadership. It also means endorsing other militant tactics when used by mass rank-and-file movements, like work-to-rule campaigns to slow production and militant tactics during strikes to block entry into workplaces, instead of following union leader mandates to unquestioningly follow the direction of cops. It can mean engaging in sit-down strikes or pushing for a general strike — and not waiting until contracts expire to do so. It can also mean engaging in political strikes, which have a rich history in Europe, Africa, and Latin America and have been instrumental in securing labor rights and other social justice victories. We need to be critical of our top elected leadership when they collaborate with the bosses or take a conservative approach to strike action.

We know most workers are not currently ready to embrace wildcats, political strikes, and other militant approaches, but we believe we can only meet the ruling class’s efforts to crush the working class by educating our coworkers about what’s possible and organizing to build collective consciousness and confidence.

We must bring an internationalist class struggle to our shop floors that sees workers across the world as part of one working class, spanning borders and cultural divides. For us that means seeing the working class as intersectional and believing that the fight for racial justice and against other forms of oppression are inseparable from the class struggle. We know that only a unified working class is capable of defeating the owning class, which seeks to pit workers against one another. Through mutual interest, workers understand they can only thrive when all workers can fight together to take control of their lives. Whether because of tiers within a U.S. workplace or depressed wages for Mexican manufacturing workers, even the most privileged workers lose out when other workers are weaker.

We can use militant approaches to make internationalist demands in our contracts, like wage floors for workers abroad employed by our companies. Working class solidarity means fighting the international ruling class, which profits from extracting oil and lithium in Indigenous communities across the world and building weapons to kill Palestinian children — giving them resources and power to control and suppress workers in the US.

We need international working class solidarity against all imperialist wars — such as the illegal U.S. bombing of nuclear sites in Iran. These wars bring death and misery to working, poor, and oppressed people. These wars are launched in order to maintain and expand domination over key resources that allow the capitalist class to increase their profits at the brutal expense of working people in both the exploiter and exploited nations. We need to advocate for mass strike actions and acts of civil disobedience to end the genocidal war on Gaza and attacks on immigrants. We are for peace and solidarity amongst the international working class and for a society free from war and capitalist exploitation.

Consistent solidarity with the most oppressed workers, in the U.S. and around the world, is paramount to building class struggle unionism.

We must see democracy as more than just an ideal but a strategic form of organizational power building — not just as an end in and of itself but as a means to achieve worker justice. “One Member, One Vote” was just the first step towards democratizing our union. Democratic norms build collective buy-in and develop trust amongst workers, who are best placed practically to agitate and organize their coworkers into collective action. Especially in high-risk fights, this trust is crucial.

For this reason, we must be committed to member-led decision-making in our unions, over how our unions function, over whether to strike, and over strike strategy. This would be enabled partly through winning procedural reforms at the UAW Constitutional Convention that neutralize the IEB’s “final say” in members’ right to engage in a protected strike. More importantly, if it is indeed a serious effort, organizing for a bottom-up general strike in 2028 must also be carried out democratically so that UAW members have trust in the strike strategy and believe in the demands. During contract campaigns, open and democratic bargaining would build worker participation and keep leaders accountable to collectively-developed strategy.

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. We need leaders who will not build individual careers for themselves and maintain peaceful relations with the bosses and their parties, but instead mobilize the union rank and file and the non-unionized working class into action to fight the bosses.

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: corporations seeking profit, the Democratic and Republican Parties, the Administration Caucus, parts of the UAW officialdom in staff and elected positions, and more. 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. Political independence for UAWD means that we protect against these forces to keep focused on our vision.

UAWD members are committed to sharing the vision of class struggle unionism in this platform with our coworkers, the UAW rank-and-file, and the broader working class. For us, that means bringing this platform to the shop floor, creating educational content that explains and explores the platform, and, most importantly, engaging with our coworkers in discussion and debate to develop a better collective understanding as a working class of how to wage class struggle. We see this platform as necessarily a work-in-progress that we will amend as we struggle and learn together.

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 — in fact, we think demanding “unity” is often a cudgel used by bureaucrats to quell debate and force rank-and-file agitators to fall in line. We do believe we should unite in action, as a membership and a working class, to fight the bosses and the ruling class. But 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. In most cases, though there may be exceptions in key moments, we think that means openly discussing strategies for our union on the shop floor, with conversations and leaflets, not allowing debate to be siloed into back rooms amongst only leadership.

We see the end goal of class struggle unionism as going far beyond mere reform of the UAW. That means that we don’t see elections, Constitutional amendments, or financial transparency as the beginning and end of, or necessarily a key focus of, our class struggle politics and organizing. They may be tactics that we turn to, and they might demonstrate the failures of undemocratic leaders in certain moments when we’ve built up power and rank-and-file buy-in. But we believe that, until then, focusing on reform alone can also create a technocratic and bureaucratic “reform movement” that actually alienates rank-and-file members instead of bringing them in. Instead, we believe that focusing on our workplaces and questions that directly impact workers, even at the national and international level, builds buy-in for a class struggle union.