Jane Slaughter

Should a Union Contract Run Eight Years?

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The camera focuses on two women in a crowd of picketers, diverse in race and gender, carrying printed blue and white "UAW on strike" picket signs. The women are wearing different UAW T-shirts. One has the collar cut off, revealing part of a tattoo that reads, in cursive, "darkness light shall prevail." Both women wear serious, determined expressions.
August 11, 2026

The agricultural machinery maker John Deere tested the mettle of the United Auto Workers this summer, probing for softness as the union heads into a leadership election this month. After fits and starts the union essentially told Deere to stick it. As promised, though, members will vote on Deere’s proposal on August 23.

On Eve of Election, UAW's Shawn Fain Stands Up to Government Monitor

Jane Slaughter
Shawn Fain, a white man with glasses, speaks at a podium. Behind him (and on the podium) is the UAW logo in white on a blue background. Yellow letters around it say (partly obscured) "Our Generation's Defining Moment."

The federal monitor charged with rooting out “fraud, corruption, illegal behavior, dishonesty, and unethical practices” in the Auto Workers union issued a report on June 25 accusing UAW President Shawn Fain of “retaliation” against Vice President Rich Boyer. Earlier reports by Monitor Neil Barofsky had made similar claims regarding Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock.

Auto Worker Delegates Back Union's Fighting Direction at UAW Convention

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Delegates stand and applaud at the UAW convention.
June 18, 2026

Delegates to the United Auto Workers constitutional convention affirmed this week the aggressive direction the union has taken under President Shawn Fain, who took office in 2023 and immediately set the 400,000-member union on a new path, illustrated in bold campaigns like the Stand Up Strike against the Big 3 automakers.

American Axle Strikers Set to Win $30 by ’30

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June 11, 2026

Update, June 16: American Axle workers voted to ratify the contract over the weekend, with 80 percent voting in favor.

For years their pay topped out at $22 an hour, max. Now $22 becomes a new hire’s starting pay, under the tentative agreement workers at American Axle reached on Wednesday, after 10 days on strike.

Their slogan and demand was “$30 by ‘30.” By 2030 all 1,000 workers in the plant will be making $30 an hour.

A Lack of Democracy in the United Farm Workers Gave Chavez Immunity

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Seven women stand by a car holding a Farmworkers Union flag
April 06, 2026

In 2011 Frank Bardacke published an 800-page history of the Farm Workers union: Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. It opened many eyes to the reasons the UFW became a shadow of its former self.

Bardacke starts the book with an epigraph, a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “O what a fall was there, my countrymen! Then I, and you, and all of us fell down...”

Take It from Turkish Workers: You Don’t Want a Strongman

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A huge crowd, as far as the eye can see, many wearking red, march down a street flanked by tall buildings.
June 02, 2025

What has happened to workers in Turkey since the country voted to concentrate power in one man, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, should be a warning flashing red to workers elsewhere.

UAW Reformers Close Caucus, Launch New Organization

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View from back of an auditorium at UAW convention. People in red shirts sit in rows; one red hoodie front and center has UAWD logo on the back. Onstage, Shawn Fain is at the podium, someone in a suit stands near him, and other people mostly in red shirts sit arrayed at long tables on the dais. A big blue screen behind them has UAW logo and intials repeated, and some other images not clearly visible.
April 29, 2025

Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), the reform caucus in the Auto Workers, voted to dissolve at its quarterly online membership meeting April 27.

“It was a heartbreaking decision to come to,” said UAWD founder and chair Scott Houldieson, a 36-year electrician at Ford. “UAWD had become a caucus that is ‘resolutionary,’ and focused more on caucus discipline than on actually organizing workers. Meetings had become dreadful. We can have differences as long as we make a decision and move on.”

You're Already On Strike. How to Turn Up the Heat?

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Striking workers and supporters hold signs that say Marathon Teamsters on ULP strike at a rally.
November 27, 2024

Teamsters at Marathon Petroleum in Detroit have been on the picket line since September 4, their first strike in 30 years. Tankers filled with gasoline regularly exit the massive, belching refinery on a main Detroit artery, as Marathon continues production with supervisors brought in from other facilities.

Viewpoint: We Won’t Win Until We’re Troublemakers

Jane Slaughter
A woman with a strike picket sign and a ‘Teamsters Against Trump’ T-shirt looks past the camera

Unions weren’t strong enough, in numbers or in influence with their members, to make a difference in this election. One sample showed union households at only 54 percent for Kamala Harris vs. 43 percent for the billionaire, with non-union households at 51 percent Trump, 47 percent Harris. If union voters had listened to their officers, Trump’s numbers would have been in single digits.

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