Things tend to move slowly in the American labor movement—big ships don’t change course quickly. An exception has been in the United Auto Workers (UAW). In the wake of a historic corruption scandal that culminated in 2020 with twelve union officials (two former presidents among them) convicted of charges including racketeering and embezzlement, the union held its first one-member, one-vote election for top leadership. Shawn Fain, a former Chrysler electrician from Kokomo, Indiana, won the presidency, and his reform slate allies won a slight advantage on the international union’s executive board.

Fain quickly emerged as one of the most prominent—and combative—labor leaders in the country, and the union rolled out a range of aggressive campaigns. A major strike at the Big Three automakers drew President Joe Biden to become the first sitting U.S. president to walk a picket line and was widely seen as a successful referendum on corporate greed and inequality in the United States. The union has pursued new organizing in nonunion auto manufacturing, especially in the mostly nonunion South and in electric vehicle assembly and parts plants, winning and occasionally losing in spectacular fashion.

And the UAW has become a key player in electoral politics. Not long after Biden’s picket line jaunt, Fain was a guest of honor at the president’s 2024 State of the Union address; after Biden stepped down from his reelection run, Fain gave a primetime address at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), and Kamala Harris quickly held UAW-organized and UAW attended rallies in the battleground state of Michigan. Fain also emerged as a major antagonist of former president Donald Trump, repeatedly calling Trump a “scab.” As this issue goes to press ahead of Donald  Trump returning to the White House, the union’s prospects under a right-wing presidency are unknown. But it’s clear that Fain has embraced a role similar to his predecessor Walter Reuther, president of the union from 1946 until his untimely death in 1970, of a labor leader whose political aim and influence extends far beyond his own union and includes a broad vision of uplift for all workers.

Jonah Furman is a top assistant to Fain and the union’s former communications director. Fain brought him on board shortly after winning the presidency; before that, Furman worked for the Bernie Sanders presidential and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez congressional campaigns, as well as for the union reform organization Labor Notes. I spoke with Furman in September 2024 about the UAW’s changes under Fain, how the union sees its current work in light of its historical legacy, Fain’s and the UAW’s call for a ceasefire in Gaza, and more.

Micah Uetricht: Shawn Fain has been the UAW president for just under two years as we speak. During that time, the union has done a lot. How would you assess the current state of your union and the reform process that it has undergone under Shawn Fain?

Our union has gone on offense.

Jonah Furman: Our union has gone on offense. This feels particularly dramatic because of all the trouble the union has had in the recent past, and a lot of members wanted to see a different direction. Fain ran for office saying, “we’re going to do things differently in every respect.” Love it or hate it, you can see that difference. We went into battle with the Big Three automakers in 2023, knowing that was the first big test. We carried out a very different approach to bargaining, to strike strategy, to member involvement during negotiations, to engaging the media and public. That immediately fed into a different organizing strategy, the “stand-up strategy” at all the nonunion automakers all at once—we’ll go guns blazing and go public. We also carried out a very different relationship to elected leaders during the strike and since. All of this has been about going from defense to offense.

MU: In the heyday of industrial unionism and throughout the twentieth century, the UAW played a vanguard role in channeling working-class energy into organizing campaigns, advancing labor militancy, and pushing a progressive agenda within the larger labor movement. Fain seems to embrace that role for the UAW today. What is your assessment of your union’s role in setting the tone and the agenda for the U.S. labor movement?

JF: The UAW is a union with a deep connection to its own history. We called the campaign at the Big Three automakers in 2023 the “standup strike” as a reference to the 1936-1937 Flint sit-down strike. Walter Reuther’s name means something in this union. The Civil Rights Movement, the March on Washington—all these historical moments feel alive for a lot of our members, many of whom are second-, third-, fourth-generation auto workers. Tapping into that identity and history drives the sense in the union that we can again play that role of leading the labor movement in a certain direction, whether in politics or strike activity. This was the union that invented cost-of-living allowances and inflation protection that won pensions and healthcare. All of these victories were UAW victories. This is a membership and a union that’s not shy about having played that role in the past and sees it as the union’s duty to be ambitious.

Fain talks about how in 1970, the union held a conference at Black Lake [in Michigan], our union’s retreat education center, about the future of the combustion engine. It’s not a union that has been afraid to step out or talk about where we are going. Fain’s approach has been, let’s light a fire and see what happens. Let’s inspire people to ask for more. In our fight at the Big Three, Associated Press polling said that 75 percent of Americans stood with us. We as the UAW see that somebody has to lead this. It’s not going to only be us—if it’s only us, we’re sunk. But somebody has to step up and raise expectations and go on offense.

Fain’s approach has been, let’s light a fire and see what happens. Let’s inspire people to ask for more.

MU: One instance of the union playing this vanguard role in the current moment seems to be the call for a general strike on May Day in 2028. This is a tall order. What for you would success look like on May Day 2028? What would failure look like?

JF: Failure would look like not trying. We are so far not just from the heights of the thirties, forties, and fifties, but even the recent status quo of the seventies and the eighties, of how many people were organizing and striking and fighting. Failure for the labor movement and for our union would just be going along to get along. The idea for a May 1, 2028 general strike was born out of aligning the Big Three contracts for May 1, partly just to revive that identity of an International Workers’ Day. But also, in the Big Three fight, we won some of the best contracts in this union’s history. What we didn’t win back was the original sin of the auto crisis: the cutbacks that auto workers took in 2007-2008 on pensions and post-retirement healthcare. It’s the most iconic sign of corporate greed at the Big Three.

We said, “we’re going to create enough pressure that it’s not just these companies who have to worry about it. We’re going to make it everybody’s problem. Corporate America is going to be on notice that if they can’t fix this issue and bring back a basic dignified retirement for auto workers and for everybody, then it’s not going to just be Ford, GM, and Stellantis’s problem. It’s going to be a problem for the federal government. It’s going to be a problem for this country.”

We want to put these issues at the doorstep of the national conversation, the media, the politicians, and corporate America as a whole. Shawn frequently says that corporate America divides and conquers. Even in the union world, they carve you up into this collective bargaining agreement contract, this unit, this expiration date, and they play everyone against each other. We need to break down that feeling of “I only care what happens at my plant, on my shift, at my company, making my product, in my state, in my country.”

It shouldn’t be, “What workers are going to take the lowest bid?” It should be, “What company is going to earn our employment and what do they have to do to keep this social contract alive?”

If we do it right, it’s not going to be just the General Motors CEO’s problem. Auto companies have for a long time done what they call “whipsawing”: “This plant over here is willing to work Sundays without overtime pay. If you don’t take that deal, we’re going to move the product over there.” One plant has to say, “Okay, we will take concessions.” They’ve done this across the economy for all American workers and unions. In the standup strike, we whipsawed the companies against each other. That’s what we want to do in the whole economy with the general strike. It shouldn’t be, “What workers are going to take the lowest bid?” It should be, “What company is going to earn our employment and what do they have to do to keep this social contract alive?” We just put up a flag and said, “Who wants in? If you want to join this movement, you’re welcome.” The American Postal Workers Union is working toward alignment on May 1, 2028; the American Federation of Teachers, the largest union in the AFL-CIO, put a resolution encouraging alignment on May 1, 2028.

Our union has been totally rocked in one direction for decades by the same forces. Whether you start at the Chrysler bailout of 1979 or PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) in the early eighties or NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) in the nineties, these pieces have all gone in one direction. What we haven’t seen is someone trying something else and seeing what happens if you push back.

MU: Let’s talk about politics. The UAW has been a key partner to the Biden administration and the Kamala Harris campaign, but the union has also staked out positions contrary to the Democratic Party’s official line on some issues. The UAW issued a call early in Israel’s war on Gaza for a ceasefire, and the union made a statement calling for the 2024 Democratic National Convention to allow a member of the Uncommitted Movement to address the convention on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

How does the UAW walk this fine line of being a key ally for the Democratic Party, while also maintaining some independence on issues that the union disagrees with the party on?

JF: We wanted an end to the go-along, get-along attitude. Early on, President Fain said, “our endorsements are going to be earned.” He made waves within the first month of his administration of not rushing to endorse the Democratic candidate at that time, Joe Biden. This was after Biden had done plenty of pro-worker things, but we had issues we needed to resolve. We were focused on ensuring the federal funding going to the “just transition” to green energy was actually a just transition; that these companies were not taking federal money to then take low-road transition positions like the jobs of auto workers in Lordstown, Ohio, who at the time Fain came in were making $16 an hour. Those plants get billions of federal dollars. We said we would stand with someone who stood with us. You then saw Joe Biden become the first sitting president to join a picket line.

. . . You want to elect people who are going to do nice things for you, but what you’re really doing is setting the conditions for every new organizing campaign, every contract you’re going to negotiate.

The other side of it is simple: you want to elect people who are going to do nice things for you, but what you’re really doing is setting the conditions for every new organizing campaign, every contract you’re going to negotiate. Donald Trump laughs about firing striking workers and lauds corporate greed and excessive wealth inequality as a virtue; that’s not someone who is going to be on our side. Compare the 2019 GM strike and the 2023 Big Three strike. You saw what happens when Donald Trump is in office and auto workers are trying to get something done. They had plant closures, they had a strike, they had no support from Trump.

The question is not “is a new president going to do it for us?” We’re going to have to do it. The question is where the scale is going to be tipped. Are the halls of power going to be for you or against you?

MU: I think there are many American labor leaders who are tired of feeling like their union support is taken for granted by the Democrats. But some have approached this question in a
different way, even by seeking openings with the Republican Party. Your union has rejected that approach, and, in your telling, it’s paying off. Why are more unions not taking an approach to the Democratic Party similar to the UAW’s?

JF: I can’t speak for the strategy of another union. But going on offense is risky. There’s a reason that teams punt the ball on fourth down. We have put up a big fight and seen some big returns. But we’re also sometimes going to lose. We lost a big election at Mercedes in Alabama. Some unions would be too scared to run that vote. I totally understand that. There’s a place for leadership to be smart about how they take risks. But a lot of unions are scared to take any risks. The one path union leadership of the UAW hasn’t taken in the past is the one we’re on now: What if you fight for what you believe in, and just go, just put your foot down on the gas pedal? Again, that means risk and failure.

In politics, it’s the same. No one wants to look back at an election and say, “Did we step out too much?” But not changing is not really an option. It looks attractive, because everyone else before me did it this way. If I make a big stink about change, people are going to expect more, and you get blowback for it. But a lot of members in this union feel like it’s time to try something else.

MU: In concrete policy terms, what would the UAW like to see from a president? What are the top-line agenda items for the union?

. . . We want to make sure the government has a serious role to play in retirement, in healthcare, in life, for people who are not going to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week.

JF: President Fain talks about four top issues: a living wage, where you can live your life on one job; healthcare, so you can go to a doctor and get your needs taken care of without going into debt and ruining your life; dignified retirement—you’re supposed to have a life after work with your family, not work for the love of corporate profits and upping a share price; and taking your life back, having time off the job. Within those four core issues, we want to make sure the government has a serious role to play in retirement, in healthcare, in life, for people who are not going to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week.

We’re also concerned about trade. Kamala Harris was one of ten U.S. senators to vote against the U.S. Mexico-Canada Agreement in 2020, which was essentially NAFTA 2.0. Donald Trump talks about how all the jobs are leaving because of NAFTA. This is a guy who renegotiated NAFTA, and we’ve seen trade deficits go up, not down. Jobs are still leaving this country, and it’s not because of union contracts, it’s because we have trade agreements that incentivize companies leaving the country to pay poverty wages in other countries and shipping it back to this country and gouging the price to increase their margins.

Unions can put forward a serious, positive vision of what a good world looks like for working-class people. And it doesn’t involve killing people thousands of miles away . . .

Our core issues are definitely economic like retirement security, but also this system where corporate America goes searching the world over for the most exploitable workers they can find to sell products back to Americans at massively inflated prices. The American worker and the American consumer and the American taxpayer all lose under this situation. This is not about foreign workers versus American workers. This is about corporations going to find the poorest, weakest person they can and forcing them to make a product that they can sell for an insane profit and never have to share a penny of that with anyone but the executives. Those are two core issues we’ll be focused on and making a lot of noise about.

MU: You mentioned Gaza earlier. What does the UAW, and the rest of the American labor movement, need to do to end the horrors in the Middle East committed by Israel? What role does labor have in the twenty-first century on U.S. foreign policy?

JF: We’ve been very public that this war is not in the interest of the American working class. We aren’t interested in fighting forever wars across the world or funding horrific violence in our name as American workers. In a democracy, the government should serve the interest of the people. And our interest is in not being, as Martin Luther King said six decades years ago, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” All the money, time, effort, political capital that is spent on horror and destruction is not spent on creating healthy communities for the working class in America or around the world.

Unions can put forward a serious, positive vision of what a good world looks like for working-class people. And it doesn’t involve killing people thousands of miles away or supporting people who are doing that. Just like we see divide and conquer everywhere else, we see it in our foreign policy. If we don’t fight that, we’re in real trouble. We’ll hear that our problem is China, Iran, some other country. But as President Fain said on the picket line with Joe Biden, the threat we face is here at home. It’s corporate greed. A government that serves working-class people should be focused on taking on that threat.

MU: The UAW has been on an organizing tear lately, including big wins at Volkswagen in Tennessee, another victory at an electronic vehicle battery plant in Tennessee. But the union has also seen major losses like Mercedes in Alabama. What’s your assessment of what went wrong at Mercedes? Do losses like this just come with the territory of carrying out big organizing campaigns?

JF: If we’re going to organize at the scale we need to, we’re going to be taking risks at a scale we haven’t seen. You’re going to lose more if you win more. Mercedes and Volkswagen are great examples of the constant push and pull between corporate and labor power in this country. There’s a general trend towards the corporate class, and there are breakthroughs by the working class. So, you can see a victory of 73 percent voting yes at Volkswagen weeks before you see a loss at Mercedes just down the road.

I’m really interested to see what those two thousand Mercedes workers who voted yes in 2024 are going to do in 2025. I’m really interested to see what the federal government, what the German government, what all the laws that have been violated by Mercedes and companies like them in elections like these—what are they going to do about it?

The German companies have governance rules about how they will treat employee organizations, and workers will always have a voice. But then Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee are all
somehow exceptions. These global companies come to the American South as their laboratory for exploitation, remove all voice and rights from these workers, and funnel money back to these massively profitable companies in other countries. The question is when there’s going to be accountability for that from their home countries, from the federal government, in the United States, from the working class—when is that shoe going to drop? I’m looking at Mercedes and thinking about the day when these workers finally get a fair shot.

MU: Until recently, you were the UAW’s communications director. After Fain’s election, the union stepped up its communications game—probably the most aggressive communications strategy of any union in the country. What is the UAW’s approach to communications? Do you view it as essential to spreading the UAW’s brand of unionism?

JF: Yes, that’s part of it. We developed a shorthand for our approach: the mirror and the megaphone. One, you’re going to put a mirror up to the membership. Reporters would call me and say, “Wow, I went out to the plant, and everyone sounds like Shawn Fain. How’d you train all these people on the talking points?” And I would respond, “We didn’t train them. They trained us.” We sound like the break room because we listen to the members. What the members say gets into the speeches. There’s some leadership, and you wordsmith and you come up with good one-liners. You throw a contract in the trash can—that was a brilliant moment from President Fain. [Editor’s note: In a viral moment early in the Big Three negotiations, during a Facebook Live stream providing updates, Fain angrily threw a copy of a contract proposal from Stellantis into a garbage can, calling the proposal “insulting” and “a slap in the face.”] But a lot of it is just listening to members. That’s the mirror.

The megaphone is turning up the volume on these companies. Stop muttering about how frustrated you are about the mismanagement, the bad direction, the anti-worker decisions, how people are treated in these companies—if you would say it at the bar, tell the news. Let’s let America know how the American auto worker feels. Just be honest and turn up to the volume. We’re not ashamed. We think we should have pensions. Is that crazy? We think we should have post-retirement healthcare. We think we should get a fair share of the profits. We think if the CEOs get 40 percent, we should get 40 percent. What is crazy about that?

Let’s let America know how the American auto worker feels. Just be honest and turn up to the volume. We’re not ashamed.

If you stop operating from a defensive position, suddenly there’s a lot of people who are like, “Hey, that makes a lot of sense.” I think it’s really important both to spread the story, but also to build the confidence of members. There’s a lot of members who went through hell with a really low period in the union’s history; I’ve had so many people say, from members to leadership, how they were ashamed to wear the UAW wheel logo. And now you’re pumping gas with your UAW hat on and people are saying, “Thank you guys for what you’re doing.”

When we were leading up to the strike last summer, it’s partly communications, but a lot of organizing, too. We said if we can have fourteen actions in fourteen locals, that’s success. Because we’ve never had a contract campaign as the Big Three. We opened the floodgates, and we had over 140 actions in forty days. If you let people speak, let people hear each other, there’s a confidence and an inspiration that unfolds. It’s just as important as nonunion members hearing about the UAW and saying, “I want to do that too.”

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Author Biographies

Jonah Furman is a top administrative assistant to United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain and the union’s former communications director. Furman has previously worked for the Bernie Sanders presidential and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez congressional campaigns, as well as for the union reform organization Labor Notes.

Micah Uetricht is the Editor-at-Large of New Labor Forum. He is also the editor of Jacobin and the author of Strike for America: Chicago Teachers Against Austerity (Verso, 2014) and, with Meagan Day, Bigger Than Bernie: How We Go from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism (Verso, 2020).