On October 25, after 41 days on the picket lines, the United Auto Workers (UAW) secured a first tentative contract agreement with Ford. Within just four days, GM and Stellantis had followed suit — agreeing to almost identical wage increases, bonuses, and benefit packages — effectively ending what had been one of the most important, dynamic, and high-profile auto strikes in decades.But the UAW strike is not just a victory for auto workers; it is a victory for the entire working class. 

　　Learning the lessons of this strike and helping to build the power and militancy of our unions, and of the new labor movement more broadly, is an important task for both unionized and non-unionized workers to take up, particularly in this moment of increasing political, economic, and ecological crisis. It is imperative that we build unions capable of taking a stand against oppression and imperialism as well as exploitation.

　　A Historic Strike for the Whole Class

　　The UAW strike is without a doubt one of the most important labor actions in the United States in decades. But the strike was not built in a vacuum, and would not have been possible were it not for the massive shift in working class consciousness and labor struggle that has taken place over the last several years. From the wave of teacher strikes that began in 2018, to the 2020 uprising against police violence, to the explosion of new labor organizing that followed the pandemic, and the massive strikes of 2023 (which included almost 200,000 actors and writers), the U.S. working class has been slowly rebuilding the militancy it lost against the reactionary neoliberal offensive of the last four decades. It was this new combativeness and spirit of rising class consciousness that paved the way for the UAW strike, which has in turn helped to catalyze the already growing power of the new labor movement. 

　　Building a Real Class Struggle Labor Movement Requires Self-Organization

　　This strike and the significant gains that were won clearly represent a shift away from the failed business union strategy of previous UAW leaders. However, turning around a vessel as massive as the UAW, with its almost 400,000 members is not an easy task and cannot be done from the top down. Despite Fain’s big ambitions, his class struggle rhetoric, and his admiration for the combative former UAW president Walter Reuther, the union remains controlled and limited by a bureaucratic leadership that continues to hamper the self-organization of its members and remains tied to the imperialist Democratic Party. Much of Fain’s criticisms of the “billionaire class,” for instance, echo the rhetoric of Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2020 primary campaign, and his increasingly cozy ties with President Biden and other Democratic Party politicians show the contradictions inherent in the top-down bureaucratic model of unionism.

　　These contradictions were on full display throughout the strike campaign. As a tactic, the stand up strike was an innovative method of disruption that kept the bosses guessing at each turn and often played them against each other. Announcing new walkouts each week also allowed the union to keep the media’s attention and the strike on the front pages. However, this strategy also limited the number of UAW members who were able to participate in the strike. Many of the most important sites of production, including most engine, axel, and transmission plants remained up and running, allowing companies like GM to continue the majority of its production uninterrupted. This not only meant that the full power of the strike was never employed (one reason why the union did not win more of its demands, including the full restoration of pensions at GM), but, since the strike was largely contained and controlled from above, it also meant that many workers were left out of the struggle and the decision-making process. Indeed, auto workers not only did not decide when and whether to begin the strike, but even the decision to go back to work while the TAs were debated, was unilaterally made in advance without any discussion among or input from the rank and file.

　　Winning good contracts is important and unions need strong leaders, but the self organization of the labor movement and the rank and file is key to building the power needed to really challenge the bosses and the tyranny of capital — that is the ways in which decisions about production are made by a small minority for the purposes of profit, not need. If we want to do that we have to insist that strikes like these be led from below by strike committees in each workplace, where decisions about where and when and how to strike are openly debated and discussed and that the negotiations be public and open to all members throughout the bargaining process.

　　This also, importantly, has to include the right of every worker, not only the leadership and the bargaining teams, to decide when to call off the strike and when to return to work. Fain claimed that the return to work at Ford was a tactical decision, meant to put pressure on the other auto companies who had not yet settled, and while this may be true, this has nonetheless weakened the union’s position to keep fighting for more and should have been decided by the workers as a whole.

　　The UAW Must Take a Stand against Oppression and Imperialism

　　Perhaps the greatest contradiction of the UAW and the U.S. labor movement more generally is its ongoing silence on state oppression, and its support — and sometimes complicity — with U.S. imperialism. With some exceptions, such as Starbucks workers’ defense of trans rights and the ILWU’s ongoing active defense of Palestinian liberation, most unions have tended to focus almost exclusively on so-called bread-and-butter struggles over wages, benefits, and working conditions, avoiding confrontations with the state over questions of politics. When labor unions do intervene in politics, it’s usually to win legislation directly related to workers rights or in the form of mere resolutions. This timidity is in part a product of the historic cooptation of labor unions by the state and the Democratic Party, which have offered legality and limited protections in exchange for labor peace and ideological conformity. The result is that the labor movement has shrunk considerably, and what remains has grown increasingly bureaucratized and politically weakened. No longer willing to represent the political interests of all working people, labor unions have, for more than half a century, retreated from a strategy of class struggle toward one of class conciliation and reconciliation.

　　This project of reconciling labor to the interests of the state has produced and continues to be reinforced by an ideological perspective which views the interests of labor unions, and of U.S. labor in particular, as tied to the fortunes of the state and separate from broader issues of oppression and exploitation at home and abroad. When otherwise progressive leaders like Fain (who criticize the “billionaire class”) stand proudly on stages adorned in the stars and stripes, proudly talk about how the UAW helped build weapons for the “arsenal of democracy,” or record happy selfie videos with the U.S. president, they provide cover for state repression of broader working-class struggles and drive a wedge between working people at home and those who are on the receiving end of U.S. imperialist violence.

　　This is perhaps best exemplified by the national UAW’s ongoing silence on Israel’s expanding occupation of Palestinian territories and its genocidal massacre of more than 11,000 civilians in Gaza, which was accomplished with weapons provided by the United States and its allies. The argument that taking sides on such events or using the power of labor to confront the perpetrators of such atrocities is somehow outside the realm of labor unions only further divides the working class where it is most powerful: in the workplaces where it is already well-organized and where it has the potential to cause massive disruption in the service of justice.

　　In this period of crises and wars that threaten the well-being and livelihoods of working people across the world, it is more important than ever that unions break free from both the ideological and structural chains of the Democratic Party and the state and learn again to use the power of labor to wage political struggles for the whole class. The significant victories won by the UAW strike and the increasingly emboldened labor movement it has helped empower show that the conditions are overripe to build an independent, working-class alternative to the Democratic Party. We cannot wait, however, for a savior to do this for us. We must build this ourselves through struggle and self-organization.

　　Editor: Zhong Yao、Liu Tingting

　　From: https://www.leftvoice.org/the-uaw-won-big-what-does-it-mean-for-the-u-s-labor-movement/（2023-11-12）