With Reform Leadership at the Helm, the UAW Has Started Bargaining With the Big Three Automakers
The United Auto Workers has begun contract negotiations with General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford. Under new leadership elected on promises of greater transparency and militancy, bargaining is looking very different from years past.
Breaking with the long-standing tradition of the “handshake ceremony” with the auto executives of the Big Three auto makers to open contract talks, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain instead speaks with and does “members’ handshakes” with Stellantis workers at the Stellantis Sterling Heights Assembly Plant on July 12, 2023 in Sterling Heights, Michigan. (Bill Pugliano / Getty Images)
Bargaining between the United Auto Workers (UAW) and Big Three automakers is looking very different this year.
New UAW leaders ditched the public handshake ceremony with company executives that has traditionally kicked off bargaining. “I’m not shaking hands with any CEOs until they do right by our members,” said President Shawn Fain in a Facebook Live talk on July 11.
Instead, officers — recently elected on promises of greater transparency and militancy, in the union’s first-ever direct election for top posts — established what could become a new tradition: the “members’ handshake.” Fain and other executive board members spent July 12 greeting workers at the gates of three Michigan assembly plants.
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