Posts tagged Vance
Commentary: Shawn Fain’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year
January 28, 2025 // Last summer, the UAW’s court-appointed corruption monitor released a shocking report detailing an investigation into allegations that the UAW Presidents Office was engaged in misconduct and retaliation against other members of the UAW executive board. To make matters worse, the UAW was also accused by the monitor of withholding documents needed for the investigation. Eventually, a federal court needed to step in to force Fain to hand over the documents, and a new report by the monitor this month announced yet another investigation into the UAW’s leadership. The UAW’s campaign to expand its membership in the South isn’t having much better luck, despite the $40 million committed to it.
Nissan workers in Mississippi consider another union campaign: VW ‘proved it can be done’
August 8, 2024 // “We were the forefathers of everything that came to be,” said Rahmeel Nash, a paint body technician at Nissan who has been at the plant for 21 years. But when it came time for Nissan workers to vote in 2017, they rejected unionizing. The final tally wasn’t close — nearly two to one against it. Nissan technician Morris Mock said one reason they lost was because of the UAW itself. The union was in the early days of a corruption scandal, one that eventually led to two presidents going to jail for embezzling. Beyond that, there were deeply entrenched anti-union attitudes in the state. Even local pastors came to speak to workers, calling the company the savior of Mississippi, Mock said.
Commentary: South Carolina should resist UAW campaign to unionize auto plants
July 24, 2024 // For example, the UAW’s strike against the Big Three automakers in Michigan last year resulted in significant layoffs, despite being seen as a victory for the union. Stellantis recently announced temporary layoffs of 1,600 workers in Michigan, and the Big Three have collectively announced over 18,000 layoffs since agreeing to the union's burdensome new contract.
UAW President Faces Allegations of Demanding Benefits for Domestic Partner
July 10, 2024 // The filing states that Barofsky is investigating whether Fain’s decision in May to remove UAW Vice President Rich Boyer from his role as the union’s top negotiator with Chrysler parent Stellantis was in retaliation for Boyer’s alleged “refusal to accede to demands” to take actions that “would have benefitted [the president’s] domestic partner and her sister.” Those actions would have amounted to “financial misconduct” Boyer later claimed, according to a separate document Barofsky’s office filed Monday. The 55-year-old Fain is currently engaged, according to the UAW website.
OPINION: UAW loses at Mercedes, but are they done with Alabama?
June 18, 2024 // The question for the UAW is where to turn next in their campaign to organize Southern auto plants. Speculation has focused on Georgia, Missouri, South Carolina, or even another crack at other factories in Alabama. But it’s not at all clear that the union has much support in any of these locations. It’s also unlikely that any of the potential target companies will sign a neutrality agreement, but rather will make sure workers have both sides of the story. So, while the UAW puts on a brave face and claims that Southern autoworkers will “Stand Up!” ꟷ it appears that what workers are standing up against is the UAW.
Mercedes workers in Alabama reject union, dealing setback to UAW
May 19, 2024 // VW workers twice voted against the UAW before last month's win, and Nissan workers at a plant in Mississippi rejected the UAW by a wide margin in 2017. In 2021, workers at an Amazon.com warehouse in Alabama voted against forming a union by a more than 2-to-1 margin. The loss complicates the story of how the UAW can market its influence, especially in the South, but it likely will not deal a significant blow to the rest of the UAW's organizing efforts, labor experts said.
Electric vehicle jobs are booming in the anti-union South. UAW is worried
September 22, 2023 // “The auto industry’s move south hangs over these talks because now only a minority of workers are in unionized assembly plants,” said Stephen Silvia, a professor at American University and author of “The UAW’s Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants.” While all of the Big Three’s plants are unionized, not a single plant in the South is unionized. Automakers’ transition to electric vehicles is accelerating these regional trends. Ford and GM are building battery plants below the Mason-Dixon Line, where states have laws that make unionization much harder than in the traditional working-class bastions of the Midwest. UAW leaders and union supporters worry the shift will lower compensation and cut out unions from the auto industry’s future, and they are seeking to address these concerns in talks with the Big Three.