{"id":1023,"date":"2026-09-09T12:12:58","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T12:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=1023"},"modified":"2026-09-09T12:12:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T12:12:58","slug":"the-uaw-wave-has-hit-our-shores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=1023","title":{"rendered":"The UAW Wave Has Hit Our Shores"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

During Claire Valdez\u2019s campaign this year to represent New York\u2019s District 7 in Congress, a slogan organically emerged: \u201cClaire was there.\u201d Repeated by labor organizers and campaign surrogates, the phrase referred to Valdez\u2019s constant presence at worker actions in the city as a member of the State Assembly over the past several years\u2014picket lines, union rallies, and fundraisers. Claire was there.<\/p>\n

Read more How Trayvon Martin\u2019s Death Launched a New Generation of Black Activism<\/a><\/p>\n

I was at one such event this past March, a benefit that raised money to send Amazon workers to an organizing conference sponsored by the magazine Labor Notes<\/em>, where a Teamsters organizer used the phrase, possibly for the first time. As the crowd of delivery drivers and union members chanted, \u201cClaire was there, Claire was there,\u201d I thought back to scenes I had visited in my reporting on labor in New York City over the past few years. Indeed, Claire was there: at a freezing 2024 holiday-season picket line outside an Amazon warehouse in Queens; at a September 2025 rally over allegations of attempted union-busting at Brooklyn Defender Services, an organization of public defenders; and, earlier this year, at a strike by Long Island Rail Road workers outside Penn Station. Each time, Valdez was marching alongside workers, hyping up the crowd, and drawing media attention as one of the few elected officials\u2014or perhaps the only one\u2014present.<\/p>\n

But as the slogan took off, Valdez was chagrined. \u201cI hated the slogan when I first saw it,\u201d she told me when we met at a coffee shop in her neighborhood of Ridgewood, Queens, this summer. \u201cIt\u2019s hard being a candidate when I really hate seeing my name in places.\u201d Politicized in the era of Bernie Sanders\u2019s 2020 campaign slogan \u201cNot Me, Us\u201d\u2014which she calls \u201cprobably the best political slogan that\u2019s ever been created\u201d\u2014Valdez didn\u2019t want the message of her own campaign to elevate her as an individual over the movements she came up through. \u201cI was there because I was organized to be there. What\u2019s so powerful about the labor movement is that it belongs to all of us,\u201d she says. \u201cIn the moments that I have been brave, it\u2019s because I wasn\u2019t alone.\u201d Now, she says, she\u2019s come around to the slogan somewhat, but with her own addendum: \u201cI wasn\u2019t there by myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valdez won her primary in a wave of victories for left-wing candidates challenging the political establishment in New York City. Congressional primary wins this summer by a slate of candidates endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2014Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Brad Lander\u2014seemed to signal a mandate for a working-class-focused policy agenda. But even among the other leftist candidates, Valdez is unique in her emphasis on the role of the labor movement in her political development and vision. \u201cJoining my union was the first time I was a member of something,\u201d she says. \u201cThat certainly shaped the way I thought about building collective power.\u201d As a worker at Columbia University, Valdez was elected chair of her unit with the United Auto Workers and served on its bargaining committee. Two years ago, with the support of the UAW, she was elected to the State Assembly. Brandon Mancilla, the regional director for UAW Region 9A, which includes New York City, says Valdez had to be persuaded to jump into electoral politics. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t come to this from a politician\u2019s ambition,\u201d he says. \u201cShe comes to this from \u2018Where can I be most helpful to the movement?\u2019\u2014to the workers\u2019 movement, to DSA, to her political homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the victories of Valdez, Avila Chevalier, and Lander can be seen as validating the mayor\u2019s agenda, they also point to the growing political might of the UAW in New York City. In addition to the victories of the congressional candidates it endorsed, 15 of the union\u2019s candidates for the State Assembly won their primaries along with all five of its State Senate candidates. In 10 of these races, the insurgent candidates unseated incumbents. According to the UAW, more than 500 members canvassed, rallied, and phone-banked to reach more than 50,000 voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen our members decide to do something,\u201d Mancilla says, \u201cwe throw down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UAW\u2019s growing, member-led political program is part of a national agenda to revitalize the union led by Shawn Fain, its president since a runoff election in 2023. Fain and a slate of leaders (including Mancilla, who\u2019d been elected the previous year) were elected on the promise of creating a more transparent, democratic union. This vision extended beyond the bread-and-butter issues of bargaining to the political sphere. Members have been highly involved in the endorsement process, gathering in local Community Action Program (CAP) councils to interview candidates and deliberate over how the union should participate in races. \u201cThey want a union that reflects their values and is organizing to change our political conditions too, not just our workplace issues,\u201d Mancilla says. The union seeks to elect candidates who not only champion its priorities but have come up through its political machine. \u201cThese candidates bring forth not just the platform\u2026they bring the experience of having fought for those things,\u201d Mancilla says. \u201cThey\u2019ve bargained contracts, they\u2019ve organized their workplace, they\u2019ve organized their coworkers, they\u2019ve been a part of or led strikes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UAW has long had a political program, recognizing the relationship between \u201cthe ballot box and the bread box,\u201d as its legendary president Walter Reuther declared. \u201cWhat the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls,\u201d he famously said. But prior to the UAW\u2019s 2023 reform process, endorsements were decided by the leadership without substantial participation from the members. Fain and Mancilla took office on a platform of broad reform, including increased democratic participation and member-led organizing initiatives, after at least a decade of corrupt leadership that made backroom deals with the bosses. That led to mass actions like the 2023 Stand Up Strike at the Big Three automakers and progress in organizing auto plants in the South.<\/p>\n

In New York, this more militant approach has often put the UAW on the opposite side of electoral fights involving other, sometimes larger unions. Valdez\u2019s opponent, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, was endorsed by influential unions like 32BJ SEIU, RWDSU, and the public-sector District Council 37. In last year\u2019s mayoral primary, the UAW was the first union to endorse Mamdani, while his main opponent, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, made his closing remarks at a rally in Union Square joined by the leaders of other local unions. Many unions, particularly New York\u2019s large public-sector unions, which rely on relationships with elected officials for funding, tend to stick to endorsing incumbents.<\/p>\n

Valdez\u2019s race served as a test case for the union\u2019s theory of building political power that it hopes will extend across the country. \u201cIf we just simply put our logo on a poster, that doesn\u2019t do much,\u201d Mancilla says. \u201cIf you\u2019re endorsing people that your members are fully behind, if you have the pulse of your membership, then you can do a lot more with volunteers.\u201d While Region 9A has been at the forefront of building the union\u2019s electoral program in New York, the UAW is simultaneously flexing its political muscle in other regions where it has a large membership. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won his US Senate primary in August with the backing of the union\u2019s political engine, despite a record $60 million in outside spending supporting his opponent, Haley Stevens. According to the union, nearly 800 UAW members knocked on 15,000 doors, made 145,000 phone calls, and organized worker-to-worker conversations that helped turn out 112,887 UAW voters during early voting.<\/p>\n

Candidates like Valdez see the UAW\u2019s political work as a critical tool to combat the exodus of working-class voters from the Democratic Party. \u201cAmerica is a hot shop right now,\u201d she says, using a labor-movement term for a workplace that\u2019s ripe for organizing. \u201cThe right is looking at the same thing we are, and they\u2019re seeing the same opportunities to win people over. They\u2019re going to beat us to it if we\u2019re not actually transforming American society.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the decade that legal aid attorney Hoda Mitwally has been a member of the UAW, she\u2019s witnessed firsthand how members have become more engaged with the political work of the union. \u201cI viewed the union as something positive, as a path to stability, but I never saw the union as being a political home,\u201d she says. But since 2023, Mitwally has seen the union\u2019s new agenda trickle down into its electoral work. \u201cWith reform-minded leadership coming to power\u2026there is now a mechanism for members to be engaged with broader politics in a way that there just was not in the very recent past,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

On summer evenings in 2024, the UAW\u2019s New York City CAP Council began holding mass-membership meetings to discuss what role it should play in the upcoming mayoral race, before Cuomo announced his candidacy or then-Mayor Eric Adams was indicted on federal corruption charges. The council compiled a 50-point questionnaire based on member submissions and hosted open candidate forums. The result of that process was the union\u2019s initially unranked slate of Mamdani, Lander, and Jessica Ramos, all of whom had been consistent presences on the UAW\u2019s picket lines in recent years. \u201cThere\u2019s a direct connection between having that participation and transparency in our meetings and the success of our program,\u201d says Jane Fox, chair of the New York City CAP Council. \u201cOur members will move the needle on an election, because they\u2019ll go out and knock doors.\u201d Region 9A has grown its membership in academia, the cultural sector, legal aid, and more over the last five years, exposing young, energized members to contract bargaining and union elections for the first time. \u201cAmerican political life is vibrant within labor unions,\u201d Fox says.<\/p>\n

In May 2025, the UAW became the largest union in the city to endorse ranking Mamdani first, while he was polling nearly 20 points behind Cuomo. Members believed that Mamdani\u2019s message about affordability would resonate if enough voters heard it, and they threw themselves into the campaign as if it were a union-organizing drive. The UAW held a kickoff canvass in the South Bronx, where Mamdani\u2019s support was seen as weak and the fluency in Spanish of many of its members was an asset. Over the course of the campaign, members completed over 1,000 volunteer shifts.<\/p>\n

In November 2025, weeks after Mamdani won the general election, New York Congresswoman Nydia Vel\u00e1zquez announced her retirement. Mancilla quickly reached out to Valdez. Other groups, including the DSA, also got in touch, encouraging her to run, but according to Valdez, it was the conversations with UAW leaders like Mancilla and Fain that made the biggest difference in convincing her. \u201cThere were plenty of people\u2014progressives, even socialists\u2014who could have run for this spot,\u201d Mancilla says. \u201cBut no one was going to be able to articulate the connection between the progressive movement and the labor movement like she would, because she embodies it.\u201d In addition to Valdez, the UAW supported a slate of member candidates who had come up through local shops. Avila Chevalier, a former investigator at Neighborhood Defender Service in Harlem and a graduate student at CUNY, generated momentum for her campaign within her UAW local. Former bargaining representative David Orkin and former UAW member Eli Northrup also won their primaries for the State Assembly.<\/p>\n

Read more In Trump\u2019s Mafia, Even Goons Can Do Billion-Dollar Shakedowns<\/a><\/p>\n

Fox says that the New York City CAP Council is actively looking to recruit more members to run for political office. The union\u2019s constitutional convention this summer passed a resolution that will create a program to develop members as political candidates. \u201cKnowing how hard it is to go up against a boss like Columbia University\u2014one of the largest private landowners in Manhattan, a billion-dollar endowment\u2014Claire has bargained against them and won great contracts for our members there,\u201d Fox says. \u201cMembers understand those are the same skills that are going to win us something in Washington or in Albany or the City Council.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the corporate media breathlessly tried to make sense of the upsurge in successful left-wing challengers, candidates like Valdez were looking back on the years of organizing that laid the groundwork for this moment. \u201cOur role as organizers and democratic socialists and DSA is to be as ready as possible for the kind of historical forces that might change our political circumstances at any given moment,\u201d Valdez says. \u201cYou have to be building durable structures and developing members as they come in and being ready to ride waves.\u201d In strongholds like the so-called Commie Corridor that traverses Brooklyn and Queens, groups like the DSA and the UAW have built a well-oiled political machine, knocking on the same doors for years.<\/p>\n

Mitwally canvassed for six days straight leading up to Election Day. At a campaign victory party that night, she reflected on the many wearying hours of organizing that had led to this moment. \u201cIt means that there was something permanent about the project that we had begun building,\u201d she says. \u201cWe had built a real constituency around these politics unlike anything that I\u2019d ever seen before in my lifetime\u2026. Had you told me 10 years ago that the UAW would be part of creating this political change, I wouldn\u2019t have believed you.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the UAW emerges as a scrappy kingmaker in New York, autoworkers in Michigan are fighting to reclaim the influence their union once wielded to advance working-class politics. \u201cThere was a time when the UAW put out our endorsement list, and there was no question people were voting for the UAW-endorsed candidate. Because when our standard of living came up, so did the whole country\u2019s,\u201d says Tielece Perry, who has worked at a Detroit plant now operated by Stellantis for 30 years and serves as chair of both her local and region\u2019s CAP councils. Throughout the mid-century administration of Walter Reuther, the union fought for gains at the bargaining table that could further the broader political horizon of the working class. In its historic strike against General Motors in 1945, the union pushed for \u201cwage increases without price increases\u201d in alignment with President Harry Truman\u2019s agenda to control auto prices and boost the working class\u2019s purchasing power. With the Treaty of Detroit in 1950, the UAW won a massive expansion in healthcare and pensions from GM at the same time it was pushing for nationalized healthcare and social pensions. But its membership numbers\u2014and with them, the union\u2019s political might\u2014have atrophied since the late 1970s, particularly in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement, as waves of plant closures hollowed out hubs of union jobs like Flint, Michigan. \u201cThey used to say that when the economy catches cold, Flint gets pneumonia,\u201d says Art Reyes II, an electrician at a truck-manufacturing plant and a 35-year UAW member.<\/p>\n

Today, the UAW\u2019s leadership in Michigan wants to bring its members more directly into the process and push for a more ambitious working-class agenda. The union maintains a significant footprint in the state\u2019s electorate, representing 350,000 active and retired members, more than a third of its overall membership. During the 2024 presidential election, in which the UAW endorsed President Joe Biden and, later, Kamala Harris, the union reported reaching 100,000 of its members\u2019 households in a single weekend. Donald Trump\u2019s margin of victory in the state was just 80,000 votes.<\/p>\n

This cycle, the UAW\u2019s Michigan CAP held its first-ever public forums with candidates for the US Senate and governorship, which all members could submit questions to and attend. A February event marked the first time that the three Democratic candidates for Senate\u2014El-Sayed, Stevens, and Mallory McMorrow\u2014had shared a stage. The state CAP also interviewed each of the candidates in the International Executive Boardroom of its Detroit headquarters, peppering them with questions of concern to members: What kind of vehicle do they drive? Do they know how to read a VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) on a car? Do they know it\u2019s possible to buy a \u201cdomestic\u201d vehicle that\u2019s actually manufactured entirely in China?<\/p>\n

In early June, the state CAP board decided to endorse El-Sayed, citing his support for the union\u2019s priorities, including Medicare for All. Universal healthcare would free up bargaining power for unions to fight for other needs, like raises and pensions. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you how much money is negotiated in contracts for healthcare from employers,\u201d says AJ Freer, who has served as a bargaining representative for Local 600, the largest in the state. \u201cIf you took that cost out of there, it would be a different ball game.\u201d And members who have long benefited from employer-provided health benefits want to see the same care extended to all Americans. \u201cWe are very fortunate,\u201d Reyes says. \u201cBut unionized or not unionized, their children, their grandchildren, their neighbors may not have access to healthcare, and we believe healthcare is a right.\u201d Members were also swayed by El-Sayed\u2019s commitment not to accept corporate PAC money, while an AIPAC-backed super PAC and shadowy groups with ties to big business poured a record $60 million into supporting Stevens. \u201cIt\u2019s the same corporations that are making these mega-donations that we sit across from at the table to negotiate wages and benefits and working conditions,\u201d Reyes says. \u201cAnd they tell us, \u2018We\u2019re broke, we don\u2019t have any money.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The member-to-member organizing model can literally open doors. Reyes always wears his union gear when he canvasses in the Flint area. \u201cWe\u2019ve been told by people at the doors, \u2018The only reason I opened my door was because I saw the wheel,\u2019\u201d he says, referring to the UAW logo. Reyes and his brother have both served as presidents of their locals, and his father was also an elected representative with the union. \u201cI know firsthand how difficult it is to go up to somebody and talk to them and tell them, \u2018Hand me your problem. I will do what I can to help you with it,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThat, to me, is what unionism is.\u201d<\/p>\n

When El-Sayed clinched the Democratic nomination in August, Reyes was relieved. \u201cIt showed us that the blitz that we were doing in educating our membership on his stances\u2014and their alignment with long-standing stances of the UAW\u2014paid off,\u201d he says. The union will now have to get its members out for what could be a bruising general-election cycle, during which more corporate dollars will likely flow into the state. Reyes gave himself just 24 hours to soak in the win before he started calling other members to ask them about volunteering.<\/p>\n

The UAW\u2019s engagement with national politics is a critical plank in its preparation for May Day 2028, when its contracts with the Big Three automakers expire. Fain has called on other unions to align their contract-expiration dates for a potential general strike, in which 150,000 workers at Michigan automakers would lead the charge off the shop floor and into the streets. Valdez says she had the date in mind when she made her decision to run. \u201cThere was this political muscle being formed within the region, but also a real necessity to have UAW members in Congress at this moment,\u201d she says. \u201cWe need federal partners there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The union is gearing up for 2028 not just by advancing its candidates but by building up shop-floor leadership through the organizing process. \u201cCampaigns are vehicles,\u201d Valdez says. \u201cThey\u2019re vehicles for organizing people, for developing new leaders.\u201d As was the case with her, these organizing efforts could produce future candidates to grow the ranks of the UAW\u2019s congressional bloc. \u201cPeople are scared because they\u2019re seeing this insurgent wave, this anti-incumbent wave,\u201d Valdez says. \u201cSome of them should<\/em> be afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valdez takes her mandate to deliver for working people seriously, because she knows what\u2019s at stake for the movements she\u2019s come up through. \u201cWhen we win, we demonstrate that there\u2019s a really broad constituency for socialism,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then when we govern successfully, we show that it\u2019s possible to do things\u2026. We raise people\u2019s expectations.\u201d As Mancilla observed, Valdez\u2019s candidacy made a unique proposition in marrying the socialist left and organized labor, two traditions that are sometimes in tension. But to Valdez and others, the only way forward for the left in the United States runs through the working class. \u201cWe\u2019re not saying anything new, but we\u2019ve built the organization that can successfully harness this political moment we find ourselves in, where working people just don\u2019t have faith in Democratic Party leadership; they don\u2019t have faith in Republican Party leadership; their lives are not getting better; wages are down,\u201d Valdez says. \u201cThey want an alternative. And we have built that alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Rutherford B. Hayes (but Forgot to Ask)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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