Understanding the cynical efforts to dissolve UAWD

Over the last few years, Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), the rank-and-file caucus of the United Auto Workers (UAW), has played the leading role in the democratization and revitalization of the union, including through: winning the referendum to directly elect top UAW leadership; helping to elect a new leadership led by Shawn Fain that helped break a decades-long single-party stranglehold by the concessionary Administration Caucus; and supporting and helping lead the successful 2023 Big 3 Stand-Up Strike. UAWD has played this outsized role with a membership of only roughly 800 members, spanning manufacturing, higher education, legal services, and other sectors. Given UAWD’s history, many observers have been surprised to see the effort by a section of the UAWD leadership, announced on March 28, to seek the liquidation of the caucus. Tempest sent a short series of questions to Andrew Bergman, Nevena Pilipović-Wengler, Toly Rinberg, and Judy Wraight, asking about the situation. They responded collectively, noting that they were in the middle of organizing for the weekend’s vote and emphasized they would have more to add in the near future.

Can you explain how the proposal to dissolve UAWD arose and the circumstances that brought the caucus to this point? 

The positive changes within UAW over the last few years, in many cases led by UAWD’s organizing strategy and vision, have led to the growth of UAWD. These rapid developments have also led to developing differences of perspective within the caucus. The majority of the Steering Committee (SC) of UAWD has led what has emerged over the last year as the reform wing of UAWD, seeking to reorient UAWD primarily toward tailing Shawn Fain’s policies and politics, focusing on supporting allied up-and-coming Local union bureaucrats in elections, and otherwise limiting the activity of UAWD and our rank-and-file members. Those of us in the SC minority, along with other rank-and-file UAWD members, have emerged as a class struggle wing, organizing to engage more rank-and-file members in manufacturing, building the early stages of a shop floor approach to fight over questions of worker control, and leading UAWD’s Organizing, Electric Vehicle, International Solidarity, and Palestine Solidarity Committees. We recently shared a vision of what class struggle means to us.

The development of these different perspectives are not surprising and should be an expected, and even necessary, part of the process of building a healthy, democratic rank-and-file caucus. Yet, as this factional tension has grown, the SC majority has grown more frustrated and heavy-handed in engaging with the UAWD membership over a wide variety of political questions. After winning the SC election last September, with the help of a large group of paper member, largely allies from the more progressive wing of the Administration Caucus, the SC majority has lost super-majority votes on key priorities at the subsequent fall and winter UAWD membership meetings, including an overwhelming defeat of their resolution to disenfranchise non-manufacturing workers. The result is that the SC majority has chosen to push through an illegitimate resolution at the April 27 membership meeting to dissolve UAWD. Those of us on the SC minority and rank-and-file members on the class struggle wing of UAWD issued a condemnation in response and put forward an explanation for why we think this is happening.

Aside from the fact this simple-majority vote on dissolution is illegitimate — properly requiring a bylaws amendment to be submitted at this upcoming meeting and a two-thirds majority vote at the next meeting to pass  — the real unprincipled move is the abandonment of collective deliberation by the leadership of a body that was founded on principles of democracy, anti-corruption, and rank-and-file power. In reality, the SC majority is not acting in good faith, trying to kill the organization instead of engaging with political disagreement, and has rolled out a thinly-veiled set of arguments, orchestrating a coup attempt with a democratic veneer.

Why is this happening now and why is it important for the labor Left?

UAWD was, from its inception, a caucus with different political tendencies that were all united around a basic principle: the centrality of building democratic, rank and file led caucuses as a necessary prerequisite to rebuilding a viable and militant trade union movement in this country.

The maneuver by the SC majority to destroy UAWD, marking a departure from this consensus, appears to be an attempt to sideline the class struggle wing of the caucus as President Fain aligns more closely with a segment of the top-down, repressive Administration Caucus to raise his chances of winning his upcoming 2026 re-election bid. There is a logic to this, given Fain’s narrow election victory margin in 2022 of only roughly 500 votes. It also stems from the leadership’s concern about a growing dissatisfaction from the auto worker rank and file, as the shortcomings and loopholes in the Big 3 contracts, which were billed as historic in 2023, have become clearer.

In addition, the country’s right-wing lurch is being felt by the UAW administration, which is in turn applying the pressure to rip apart UAWD and insulate the leadership from associations with  more radical politics. The SC majority and their allies are placing loyalty to the Fain presidency above maintaining a democratic rank-and-file caucus, while the class struggle wing is fighting to maintain the caucus as an independent political actor. An independent, democratic caucus would be a challenge for Fain, who, in addition to continued and overwhelming support from UAWD members, has also faced caucus criticism over issues like papered-over weaknesses in the Big 3 agreements, his lack of transparency in engaging with the UAW Monitor, and his tariff policy. But, unfortunately, the SC majority has chosen not to bring members and elected leaders together to enable debate and rally in the face of escalating attacks on the working class by the Trump administration. Instead, they’ve decided that it is easier to burn the house down as they leave rather than engage with and cohere their caucus in advance of the next UAW elections. 

Yet, both sides acknowledge that Fain is the best president the UAW has had in decades, and that his presidency has created meaningful openings for advancing a break with business unionism, such as through his call for the 2028 General Strike. It’s just that the loyalist reform wing — which under the SC majority is planning on launching a new “network of shop-floor organizers” — is ready to trade access to the administration for acquiescence, while the class struggle wing is not.

While details are scant, our expectation is that such a “network” will be modeled closely after Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). Certain TDU and Labor Notes leaders — connected through the DSA caucus, Bread and Roses, which has multiple members in Steering Committee and UAWD staff positions — have been long-time advisers and financial benefactors of UAWD. When UAWD was founded, the initial template was TDU, which is largely run by staff organizers and has limited democratic participation. TDU holds only one membership meeting per year where political debate is stifled and discussion of even core issues, like TDU’s support for Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, is completely taboo. In UAWD, it took many of us organizing internally to create vibrant, worker-led democratic committees and build a commitment to holding deliberative quarterly membership meetings, where key issues related to caucus policy and working class politics are debated and decided.

We believe that UAWD is a nascent yet growing caucus in a major union that should be defended. The forces exerted on it are massive and those of us on the labor Left should be careful analysts and students of history to understand why this is important and how bottom-up movements can thrive and avoid co-optation over the long haul.

What is the response to the argument from the SC majority and others that UAWD has reached an organizational and political impasse and has failed to organize? 

After electing President Fain and the rest of the Members United slate, UAWD transformed from a campaign organization to a movement-building organization. Admittedly, as we entered a phase focused on building local-level rank-and-file formations, the metrics of our success have been more difficult to quantify and a diversity of opinions about the best organizing strategies have emerged. 

But instead of taking this challenge seriously, and finding a way to debate and test out competing approaches, the SC majority and opportunistic onlookers are now reducing political and strategic differences to infighting. We don’t have to defend every single organizing decision made by UAWD, or certain drawn-out meetings or contentious chat exchanges, to flatly reject this as a disingenuous talking point.

Despite the SC majority attempting to scapegoat higher education and legal services workers as creating an impasse, the reality is UAWD remains an active organization, innovating on new strategies, especially in the manufacturing sector.

Just last month, UAWD conducted a successful leadership training for manufacturing workers with more than 50 rank-and-file workers in attendance, our Electric Vehicle Committee developed a shop floor training for a worker-led EV transition, and we recently held a successful convention full of trainings and political debate. Our Organizing Committee, though still relatively small, is engaged in long-haul organizing working closely with leaders across more than 10 manufacturing Locals. It has built campaigns at Stellantis fighting for jobs and is currently releasing a 2028 General Strike educational flyer across several cities in advance of May Day. 

We welcome debate and strategic disagreements on any of these efforts, but this kind of member-led activity is simply not the hallmark of an organization paralyzed by infighting. Even when membership growth has slowed, after a period of growth during the Big 3 strikes, all of these efforts have put UAWD in contact with hundreds of manufacturing workers just in the last few months, and, perhaps more importantly, enabled active UAWD members to grow as leaders.

The move to demonize Palestine organizers has been particularly disheartening. While debate about Palestine organizing took up substantial portions of two quarterly membership meetings directly after October 7, 2023 the reality is UAWD has spent very little organizational capacity on the issue. The few UAWD projects that focused on Palestine, such as an educational “From the Shop Floor to Gaza” panel, were in fact relatively successful in their goals of creating internal education within UAWD and building stronger connections with Palestinian and black radical community organizers, especially in Detroit.

We’ll have much more to say in the weeks to come, but for now, we encourage those interested in learning how we got here and hearing our ideas about class struggle to read the SC minority statement in detail. We hope UAWD still stands after April 27, but no matter what, we’ll keep organizing for democratic rank-and-file organization and for class struggle.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

Featured Image credit: Scott Dexter; modified by Tempest.