Truthout is an indispensable resource for activists, movement leaders and workers everywhere. Please make this work possible with a quick donation.

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain has won a second four-year term, with an overwhelming lead in member balloting for the union’s top officers.

The election was a referendum on the new fighting direction Fain has taken the union by leading 2023’s Stand-Up Strike against the Big 3 automakers, other bold contract fights, and new organizing campaigns.

It marks the second time members have voted for their top officers in the union’s 91 years. UAW members voted to switch to a one-member-one-vote system in December 2021.

With votes in eight of the union’s nine regions counted as of Friday morning, Fain had more than two-thirds of the vote, against five opponents. His nearest competitor, incumbent vice president Rich Boyer, had 14 percent.

Fain is running as part of the United UAW slate. His slate-mate for secretary-treasurer, Brandon Campbell, has also garnered two-thirds, against two rivals including incumbent Margaret Mock.

United Auto Workers Vote to Divest From Israel in Historic Victory

The slate’s candidates for the three vice president spots appeared on track to be elected with 19-25 percent each in a field of 11 candidates. (VP candidates need 16.7 percent to win.) The slate has also won all the regional director races counted thus far that it contested.

If the slate sweeps, as appears likely, it will hold all the seats on the union’s International Executive Board except for one regional director.

Fain has won a majority of the vote in most locals, from assembly plants to legal services, and a plurality in almost all the rest. Boyer, who heads the union’s Stellantis division, has won just two of the union’s dozens of big locals: Local 140, Warren Truck, his home local, and Local 1700 at Sterling Heights Assembly Plant, both near Detroit.

Turnout was low and similar to the 2022 election, with a little over 10 percent of the union’s 400,000 active members and 600,000 retirees returning their mail ballots. (Retirees also vote on top officers in the UAW.)

While some expected Fain’s strongest support to come from the higher education and legal aid locals on the East Coast, turnout there was down by more than half from 2022, with fewer than 2,000 ballots counted. Turnout was up in Local 4811 at the University of California, which went 75 percent for Fain, but still only 2,500 of 60,000 members there voted. As in the last election, it was members in the big manufacturing locals that were key to Fain’s victory.

Perennially online candidate Brian Keller had 7 percent of the presidential vote. As the ballots were counted he took to Facebook Live to swear at members for 30 minutes and call them “morons” for not voting for him.

In phone interviews with a dozen members, auto workers cited pensions and post-retirement health care as their key motivators for backing Fain. They also raised concerns about tackling automation and job security.

But the biggest issue was the better contracts the UAW has won since Fain took office.

Infighting between Fain and his opponents on the outgoing International Executive Board—Rich Boyer, Margaret Mock, and Mike Booth—came up, but people drew widely different conclusions, with many repeating the phrase Fain “isn’t perfect.” Jeep worker Megan Fagan in Toledo said some members have checked out due to the internal drama, reinforcing the cynical view that not much has changed.

For most, though, disagreements at headquarters were not of interest or on their radar. They looked at their pay stubs and voted accordingly.

Boyer, Mock, and Booth came together to form the Integrity Slate but failed to offer a counter to Fain’s focus on fighting the companies and launching new organizing drives. Boyer’s main pitches in his campaign statement in the UAW magazine were to lower union dues and reduce the staff at union headquarters.

“Fain and his........

© Truthout