The UAW’s Shawn Fain on Union Growth and Union Power
United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain: “Make no mistake: the billionaire class is not going to give up power willingly. They are on an endless pursuit of profit, no matter the cost.”
Shawn Fain speaking in Flint, Michigan, on October 4, 2024. (Sarah Rice / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
This month marks two years since the United Auto Workers’ (UAW) “stand-up strike.” We made history as a union with that fight. But we’ve got more to win, at the Big Three and beyond.
Our Big Three contract expiration in 2028 is less than a thousand days away. So it’s time to talk about how far we’ve come, how far we have left to go, how we’re going to fight differently so we can win differently, and how we’re going to finally win justice for what the working class lost in the Great Recession — starting with retiree pensions and health care.
I want to start with a couple images, what I believe are the most important charts in America in 2025. They are simple charts, but they tell the whole story about everything that is wrong with our country and economy.
On one line, you see productivity. Since 1948, American workers have been producing more and more value. Our productivity is through the roof. An average full-time worker today is creating 250 percent more value for their employers than a worker did in 1948. We work harder, we work smarter, we generate more wealth than any generation of workers in US history.
On another line, you see wages. For a while, wages kept up with productivity. Unions had the power to make sure that when workers produced more, they also got paid more. That’s how it should be.
But starting around 1980, that line broke. Productivity kept climbing, and wages flatlined. And as seen on the second graph, at the same time productivity climbed and wages flatlined, union membership began to crash. One in three workers belonged to a union in the 1950s. Today only about one in ten workers are in a union.
When corporations went on the attack, union membership went down, and wages went down with it. But that productivity line kept going up.
So, where did all those productivity gains — all that value that we created with our hands and our minds — go?
The working class didn’t see rising productivity get rewarded with more money in our pockets. Instead, the profits went to the top. To the billionaire class. To the people who never step foot on a factory floor but think they own everything we build.
We live in a country where the richest 1 percent of humanity now owns more wealth than the bottom 95 percent of the world’s population combined.
Where the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans own 93 percent of all stocks.
And where the average retirement savings for the bottom half of Americans is zero. That’s why this fight for retirement security is so critical. That’s why the battles we’ve waged over the last two years matter so much. And that’s why May Day 2028 will be the defining moment of our generation.
This week marks two years since the stand-up strike began. That strike changed everything. Our union did things differently. We told the companies that expiration dates are deadlines, not reference points. UAW leadership didn’t shake hands with the CEOs as we’d done in the past. We shook hands with the members.
We ended “blackout bargaining,” went public with our demands, and gave live updates about what was happening in negotiations. And we launched a communications strategy that turned our contract fight into a referendum on corporate greed.
And it worked. Seventy-five percent of Americans said they stood with us against the Big Three. That’s unprecedented.
I said back then that we had to eliminate the word “can’t” from our vocabulary. For decades we were told we can’t fight for retirees. We can’t win back a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). We can’t demand massive raises. We can’t end wage tiers. Well, we did.
We won life-changing wage increases and cost-of-living adjustments. Just this week, Stellantis workers got another raise. GM workers will soon see theirs. Ford workers, in October.
That brings total wage increases to 17 percent since the contract’s ratification. That’s about $6 more per hour for production workers and $8 more for skilled trades.
On top of that, Big Three workers are already earning more than a dollar an hour in COLA protections against inflation. That’s thousands of dollars a year, locked in to protect wages. And at the end of the agreement, that COLA is folded into our base wages, increasing our lifetime earnings.
We also fought for retirees and won annual bonuses for the first time in decades. We shortened the progression to top pay from eight years to three. We increased the 401(k) contribution; we won a new holiday and a $1.50 tool allowance for the trades.
But most of all, we showed that when workers stand up together, we can defy decades of corporate propaganda. We can defy the talking heads who said we were finished, and we can defy the politicians who wrote us off. We showed that when workers stand up together, we can break the cycle of concessions. We can break the fear that held us back for generations, and we can break the chains that corporate America put around us.
We showed that when workers stand up together, we can win what they told us was impossible: raises, COLA, money for retirees, and an end to wage tiers. And most importantly, we showed that when workers stand up together, we can move mountains. We can change the balance of power in this country.
That’s the legacy of the stand-up strike. And that’s the foundation for everything that has come since, and everything that lies ahead.
Out of that fight, we created something new: the Department of Bargaining Strategies. Because we weren’t just going to keep that playbook locked up for the Big Three. We were going to take it everywhere.
We took it to Daimler Truck, where we won record wage increases, profit-sharing for the first time ever, and COLA. We took it to Rolls Royce, where we ended tiers, secured COLA with a roll-in, and delivered historic raises. We took it to Cornell University, where we ended tiers, won the first cost-of-living adjustment in higher education, and secured big wage gains for campus workers. We took it to General Dynamics Electric Boat, where we won record wage gains and forced a major defense contractor to sit down with its workers in a way it never had before.
And every one of those fights, every contract campaign we ran and contract we won, had ripple effects. Nonunion employers scrambled to hand out raises and benefits, hoping to keep workers from joining a union.
That’s why I’ve said from day one: bargaining strong contracts goes hand in hand with organizing more shops.
The UAW Is Leading the Way
Speaking of organizing, let’s talk about the breakthroughs we’ve made.
For years, people told us we couldn’t organize the South, that it was impossible, that the laws were stacked against us, that the culture was too hostile.
Well, we did it.
We won a blowout election at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And now, those workers are fighting for a first contract. Volkswagen, like every nonunion employer, is dragging its feet. They’re slow-walking negotiations, hoping workers get discouraged. But our members aren’t backing down.
Just last month, we won a massive organizing victory at BlueOval SK (BOSK) in Kentucky. Ford and SK tried every dirty trick in the book: delaying the election by eight months, firing union leaders, and threatening and intimidating workers.
They failed. Workers stood strong. They voted union.
Now BOSK is trying to use their army of corporate lawyers to delay certification, to flood the unit with workers outside the bargaining unit, to tie us up in court. But we will not let them break the will of our members.
All told, in the past two and a half years, we have organized fifty new shops. That has translated to about 75,000 workers that have joined our union in just over two years. Our union has grown by close to 20 percent over the last two years.
In fact, in 2024, four of the five biggest private sector union victories in the entire country were UAW. In 2025, it’s the same thing. We are again leading the way with four of the five largest private sector union victories.
When it comes to the public sector, we are also leading the way nationally. Just this month, 7,200 research and administrative workers at the University of California voted to join the UAW. Our higher education organizers have set the goal of organizing 25,000 higher education workers in 2025, and I believe we are going to make it happen.
Our union is growing at a tremendous speed. That is not an accident. That is strategy. That is putting our money where our mouth is. That is power.
Building Working-Class Power
We organize because when that line for union membership goes down, the whole working class suffers.
When that line for union membership goes down, it doesn’t just mean stagnant wages. It also means lost benefits. It also means tiers. It means little or no retirement security when you’re too old to work and too young to die. It means whatever the company wants to do to you, they can probably get away with it.
In the Big Three, it meant we gave up the retirement benefits that generations before us fought and even died for. With financial trouble on the horizon, the Big Three came to us in 2007 and demanded that we give up our pensions and postretirement health care for anyone who wasn’t hired yet. We lost these benefits that had set the standard for the entire working class.
We could have had more of a backbone. But it wasn’t just that. We had grown weak and our membership had declined. At one point, we represented the vast majority of autoworkers in this country. It wasn’t just numbers. It was power.
The reality is that the more workers are part of our movement, the more powerful we are. That’s the lesson of this chart.
That’s why everything we do — the strikes, the contracts, the organizing breakthroughs — it’s about one thing: building power. If we want to restore dignity and stability for working people, then we have to grow our movement.
Our goal is to win retirement health care back for every single worker. Our goal is to give every worker a pension that isn’t at risk of evaporating when the market crashes.
These are ambitious goals.
In 2023, before the stand-up strike, we put together a brilliant team of researchers and strategists to decide which plants to target and keep the companies guessing. When we return to the negotiating table in 2028, we are going to be more prepared with an even more ambitious plan.
But even the best strategy in the world can’t win back retiree health care or pensions if we don’t have the raw power to force the companies to say yes when they want to say no. That’s why we moved our Big Three contract expirations to midnight on April 30, 2028. So we can strike on May 1. May Day. International Workers’ Day.
We didn’t do that by accident. We did it with the hope and belief that other unions and working-class people will join us — that together, we can turn May Day into a national day of reckoning.
The fight can’t be with one company in our union. It can’t be one sector of our union. It can’t be even just one union. It has to be all of us, striking together. If more union workers stand up together, we will all have more power to win what we’re owed.
The billionaire class is on one side. The working class is on the other. And the fight ahead is about who will control the wealth we create and the society we live in. Make no mistake: the billionaire class is not going to give up power willingly. They are on an endless pursuit of profit, no matter the cost.
They will try to divide us with tiers. They will try to divide us by race, by gender, by who we love, by who we worship, by what language we speak and what bathroom we use. Anything to keep us from uniting in common cause as the working class. And when that’s not enough, they’ll use their power in government to lock in an undemocratic system that keeps working people on the sidelines.
But where corporations seek to produce profit, our movements must produce leaders. Not just in the shop, not just in the union hall, but in society. That is why our fight is bigger than wages. It’s bigger than benefits. It’s about power — who has it, who doesn’t, and what we’re going to do to change it.
What does that mean in practice? It means we must continue to organize the unorganized. Millions of workers want a union. We have to bring them into our movement.
It means we must rebuild our own union’s strength, from the shop floor up. Every worksite needs strong leaders who can stand up to the company at a moment’s notice, whether it’s to enforce the contract or win a better one. It means we must rebuild our power to strike. It means we must revive the strike, not just as a weapon to win better contracts but as a school for class struggle. When workers strike, we learn how much power we really have.
Some of our members want us to stop being political. But if we are going to win things as big as pensions or postretirement health care, we can’t ignore politics.
The answer is not to become an appendage of one political party, but to build an independent working-class force. Our politics as a union should be rooted in bold, ambitious demands — wages, health care, retirement security, controlling our time — and we should hold every politician accountable to them.
We must elect more of our own. Not millionaires who’ve never worried about a bill, not corporate stooges, but working-class people who know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck.
And we must deepen our ties to our communities. Because our fight is not just in the shop. It’s in the neighborhoods we live in, the schools our kids attend, the hospitals we depend on, the planet we all share.
That’s the work ahead of us. That’s the road to May Day 2028.
When I ran for this office, I said we needed to put humanity first. And I said we needed to get back to basics — back to the issues that matter most to working people having a dignified life.
What Unites Us?
So the question for us is: What unites us as working-class people?
In my walk, I have found that there are four core issues that every working-class person agrees on and is ready to stand up for, from the workplace to the ballot box. Those four core issues are simple: wages, health care, retirement, and time.
The first pillar is wages. No matter what work you do, you should earn enough to live a decent life. A wage that lets you pay the bills, support a family, and have dignity.
The second pillar is health care. We live in the richest nation in the history of the world, yet we rank dead last among rich industrial nations when it comes to meeting the health needs of our people.
Health care should not be tied to whether your boss is feeling generous. In the richest country in the history of the world, no one should have to choose between seeing a doctor and feeding their family. No one should have to go into debt to pay their medical bills.
Our health care system robs workers of dignity and weakens our power at the bargaining table. Health care should be a human right for all workers.
The third pillar is retirement security. Our country is in a retirement security crisis. Last year we hit Peak 65 — more Americans are turning sixty-five than at any other time in our history. The bottom 50 percent of Americans have no retirement savings. That is a crisis.
After a lifetime of work, you should not retire into poverty. You should not retire into fear. You should retire with dignity, with health care, with a pension that allows you to live.
And the last pillar is our time. Our lives are not meant to be consumed by work.
Technology is advancing faster than ever. Walter Reuther said, “We must master technology, not let it master us.” Technology could be used to shorten the workweek, to guarantee jobs for everyone, to help us live more fulfilling and productive lives. If advances in technology only make billionaires richer while everything gets worse for the working class, then we’ve failed.
That’s why we must fight for shorter workweeks for the same or more pay, for more time with our families, for balance in our lives. For contract language we can enforce that protects our bodies, our families, and our lives off the job.
Wages. Health care. Retirement. Time. These are the foundation of living a dignified life. And this is the foundation we will stand on when we walk into bargaining in 2028.
An Unfinished Fight
We’ve won historic gains. But our fight is not finished. Because today, in our union, we still have tiers in retirement. If you were hired before 2008, you have a pension. You have retiree health care. But if you were hired after 2008, you don’t.
Think about that. Two workers doing the same job, side by side, shoulder to shoulder — one is promised a dignified retirement, the other is left to fend for themselves. That is not solidarity. That is not justice. And that is not the future of the UAW.
Ending retirement tiers will be the defining fight of 2028. This is about leaving things better for the next generation. The generations before us fought and sacrificed to win pensions and health care. We owe it to the next generation to win them back.
This is about fairness. If you sacrifice years of your life to an industry and to a company — then you deserve to retire in dignity, no matter WHEN you were hired.
This is about power. Because every dollar stolen from retirement security didn’t just vanish. It went straight into the pockets of CEOs and Wall Street.
That’s the broken system we’re here to fix.
During the Big Three stand-up strike, the corporate media said we were going to wreck the economy. I told them we aren’t going to wreck the economy. We are going to wreck their economy — the economy that works for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. An economy that leaves workers without living wages, without adequate health care, without retirement benefits, without time for our family and friends.
This is what I’m talking about when I’m talking about the billionaire economy: between 2015 and 2025, the Big Three made over $200 billion in profits. And you know what they did with those profits? They showered them on rich shareholders and corporate executives.
Over the last decade, the Big Three have used $110 billion of those profits for stock buybacks and dividends. Who does that benefit? Why do we accept this as a society?
And it isn’t just the Big Three.
It’s the same story at General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, John Deere, Daimler Truck, CNH, Cleveland-Cliffs, Dana, and Lear. In fact, our union represents workers at twenty-six publicly traded companies across five sectors. And since 2015, UAW members at those companies have produced $566 billion in profits. And those same twenty-six companies have distributed $530 billion in stock buybacks and dividends.
That’s over half a trillion dollars. That’s how much it cost to build our country’s entire interstate highway system in today’s dollars.
And remember: 93 percent of all shares are owned by the top 10 percent of the wealthiest families in the United States. The majority of Americans have no investments or very few investments in the stock market.
UAW members at these twenty-six companies — which represent auto, ag imp, aerospace and defense, and IPS — produced $566 billion in profits and 94 percent of those profits were used for stock buybacks and dividends so the rich can get richer. That is outrageous. That is the economy we need to break.
And we have a plan to break it. That plan is May Day 2028.
On May Day 2028, the UAW will not settle for anything less than retiree health care and a real pension.
Moving Mountains
Two years ago, they said the UAW was irrelevant. They said we couldn’t win. They said we couldn’t organize. They said we couldn’t strike.
And yet here we are, two years later, leading the labor movement — not just in this country, but across the world. We have moved mountains. And we’ve got more mountains to move.
May Day 2028 will be our defining moment. Just as the Great Depression generation built the UAW and just as the postwar generation built the middle class, our generation will build a new future.
This fight is bigger than one contract. It’s bigger than one union. It’s bigger than one industry. This is a fight for the soul of the working class.
We’ve shown what’s possible when we stand together. And now, we have to make it bigger. When we stand up together, when we fight together, we will move mountains. Just like the generation that went through the Great Depression, this is our generation’s defining moment. What we do or don’t do will affect generations to come.
Our power is collective. Our mission is justice. And our time is now.