Release: Reformers Launch UAW Member Action to Carry On the Work of Transforming the UAW
Detroit, MI – UAW Member Action is a new, union-wide network of members supporting each other to stand up to employers, grow as activists and organizers, and carry on the transformation of our union at every level.
“The UAW needs an organization where members can build at the grassroots level to keep our union moving in its progressive and militant direction,” says leader Stephen Hinojosa of UAW Local 12 in Toledo, OH. “The energy of the membership has been unleashed in many recent contract campaigns. We want to bring these member leaders together to learn from each other for the fights to come.”
UAW Member Action is led by experienced organizers who contributed to the decisive victory in 2021 of the One Member One Vote campaign, ensuring that UAW members could vote directly for the union’s top officials, and to the election of President Shawn Fain and the Members United slate in 2023. As founders and key leaders within the reform caucus Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), they helped usher in a new era in the new UAW.
“Over the course of my 36 years as a UAW member, I have been lucky to learn from and be a part of many iterations of the reform movement,” said Scott Houldieson, a Ford electrician in Chicago’s UAW Local 551, a founder and former Chair of UAWD’s Steering Committee. “We are proud of the major transformations we made to our union through UAWD. Building on those victories requires focusing on priorities shared across the diverse membership of our union and creating room for all UAW members to have meaningful input in our union’s direction. That’s what we plan to do in UAW Member Action.”
As part of the inauguration of UAW Member Action, UAWD will be brought to a formal end. Houldieson and the other leaders from UAWD’s Steering Committee who will be joining UAW Member Action won their contested elections last September by a two-thirds majority, with a mandate to focus on educational training and organizing at the local-union level. However, sharp disagreements within the caucus over direction made it impossible to continue growing. Due to ongoing disagreement, these leaders recommended a resolution to UAWD’s membership to dissolve the caucus so that members could pursue differing visions in separate organizations. At the Membership Meeting on April 27th, a majority of UAWD members voted in favor of dissolution.
“This is a step forward to create an effective and focused organization that can meet the needs of the current moment, including the egregious attacks on immigrant workers and higher education workers,” says Alexandra Bruns Smith, an immigrant and workers rights attorney and member of UAW Local 2320.
UAW Member Action will focus on urgent priorities for the labor movement: organizing to elect leaders committed to building a militant, democratic union; fighting back against attacks on basic labor rights; safeguarding direct elections in the UAW constitution; and preparing for 2028 — when contracts with the Big 3 automakers and other employers nationwide will expire.
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