By Kalea Hall and Nora Eckert
DETROIT, June 15 (Reuters) – United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain is seeking a second four-year term as leader of the 400,000-member union, entering the race as the favorite after a walkout three years ago that was popular with workers.
But stumbles in organizing and allegations of mismanagement have raised concerns among some members.
Fain, who has said he plans to run, and his opponents are expected to be nominated by delegates at a UAW convention in Detroit this week, ahead of the election in the fall.
The election is likely to be closely watched by Detroit automakers Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis, whose U.S. factory workforces are largely composed of UAW members.
During the most recent round of contract talks, in 2023, Fain proved to be the most combative union chief the companies had encountered in decades.
The 57-year-old former Chrysler electrician won broad support among UAW members after he led a six-week walkout against the automakers, notching up historic 25% wage increases and marking the first time in the union’s history that it waged strikes on all three companies simultaneously.
Since then, however, Fain has suffered some setbacks. The UAW’s ambitious $40 million campaign to organize non-unionized automakers across the nation produced one major win at Volkswagen but lost momentum elsewhere, including a failed unionization vote at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama.
“We’ve done things in three years that haven’t been done in 30,” Fain told Reuters in an interview. “We’re just getting started.”
Rivals are seeking to turn the race into a referendum on Fain’s leadership. A federal watchdog, appointed in 2021 to oversee union management following a corruption scandal, has accused him of retaliating against other UAW leaders and of a lack of transparency.
Labor experts said those issues, however, are unlikely to outweigh the contract gains many members associate with his first term.
The stalled organizing drive “has been an epic, if somewhat predictable, failure, but it probably won’t play any role in the outcome of the election,” said John Logan, a labor professor at San Francisco State University.
Fain faces several opponents, whose platforms include calls for responsible implementation of AI and automation, big wage hikes, and increased transparency in the union. They include Brian Keller, Will Lehman, Greg Mooney and Tricia Geiger, who all confirmed to Reuters they plan to run.
Last year, the federal monitor reported that Fain had retaliated against the UAW’s secretary-treasurer, Margaret Mock, by reassigning some of her duties. His chief of staff, Chris Brooks, later departed the union after the monitor said he was part of the retaliation campaign.
The union’s executive board has also been in turmoil over the management of its investment portfolio, which was the subject of one of the monitor’s recent reports. The union said it has been in compliance with its investment policy for almost a year, and would implement the monitor’s recommendations to enhance its governance and investment-management processes.
“Every board had its challenges,” Fain said. “Everything we’ve done, we’ve done by putting this membership first.” He added that the UAW has “adopted almost every reform suggested by the monitor.”
Fain is the first president selected by union members, after the union membership voted in favor of a direct-election method instead of a delegate system in 2021, and has won over workers through a hard-nosed bargaining approach. In one livestream to members during the 2023 negotiations, he tossed a company contract proposal in a trash can.
“Shawn Fain’s communication efforts, the willingness to strike, the gains we got, were very welcome,” said Eric Hall, a union member for nearly 40 years who works as an electrician in Ford’s Kansas City assembly plant.
Hall said he hopes the next union president improves on healthcare benefits for retirees, scheduling stability and guarantees of future models for factories, to protect workers’ jobs.
Volkswagen worker Douglas Snyder, who voted against the first union contract at his Tennessee plant because it did not meet his expectations for better wages and healthcare, said he is not planning on voting for Fain.
Snyder called the 2023 contract “crappy” and had wanted more communication from Fain during the negotiations, as well as more pressure from him on the company. He also thought Fain should be more involved with autoworkers in the South if the union wanted to unite and organize them.
He said he is looking for a president “that’s actually going to be engaged with their base.”
(Reporting by Nora Eckert and Kalea Hall in Detroit; Editing by Mike Colias and Edmund Klamann)
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