The 6,500 workers build the Jetta, Tiguan, and Taos at the company’s Puebla plant. Their union, SITIAVW, is one of Mexico’s most storied independent unions, and is in the midst of the plant’s annual wage reopener negotiations.

Days before the strike deadline of October 22, the company presented two proposals—offering raises of 7.98 percent and 7.95 percent for a one-year duration—which were rejected by the union. Soon afterwards, the company presented another offer: an 8.24 percent increase, of which 3.59 percent is a one-time payment of 12,000 pesos, equivalent to about $641 U.S. The deal would maintain the yearly salary reopener, a cycle the company had tried to lengthen in previous offers. Workers will vote on the offer on October 28, and could strike the next day if a deal is not reached.

On October 15, workers voted down an offer that would have provided a 13 percent combined increase to wages and benefits over the next two years. The vote was 3,135 against and 2,452 for.

A month earlier, workers had overwhelmingly voted down the previous offer of a 10 percent combined increase. (The union had been pushing for a 17 percent increase earlier in negotiations.) Days before that first agreement was put to a vote, Volkswagen cut one of three shifts in a segment of the plant that produces the Jetta and the Tiguan. About 800 workers lost their jobs, El Financiero reported.

Although the union announced that 611 of the workers—those who did not sign voluntary separation agreements—would be eligible for reinstatement when Volkswagen begins production of its Golf compact car at the Puebla facility next April, the damage was done. 5,925 of the company’s 6,440 eligible voters participated in the ratification vote: of them, 73 percent voted to reject the offer, in what SITIAVW advisor Willebaldo Gómez Zuppa characterized as an expression of anger at the firings. The deal would have also pushed the next wage reopener to 18 months out instead of the yearly cycle, angering workers.

‘NOT AT OUR EXPENSE’

Workers were also frustrated with the company’s efforts to put off their next wage reopener for 18 months rather than a year. The second offer would have pushed the wage reopener out even further, to two years.

“We are not blind to the delicate crisis facing the German automotive industry, nor are we ignoring the global financial challenges Volkswagen cites,” the union said in a statement in September after workers voted down the first offer. “But let it be heard loud and clear, all the way to Wolfsburg: corporate crises will not be resolved at the expense of the sweat, the rights, and the future of the Mexican working class.”

Volkswagen did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement sent to La Jornada de Oriente, VW said, "We respect the result of the vote... and at the same time, express our deep worry and disappointment. This agreement represents the greatest viable offer from the company, given current conditions.”

GLOBAL LAYOFFS

In September, VW announced plans to eliminate 50,000 jobs globally by 2030, alongside another 50,000 already anticipated cuts—together representing the largest culling of jobs ever by a single automaker.

The company noted in September that its European factories have the capacity to produce 500,000 more vehicles per year than it can sell. The industry faces “enormous pressure” due to low cost electric vehicles produced in China, Volkswagen's CEO Oliver ​Blume said at the Paris Motor Show in October. Its restructuring plan calls for eliminating half the models it produces (the less profitable half).

IG Metall, which represents 120,000 Volkswagen workers in Germany and sits on the company’s supervisory board, agreed to accept the closure of four German plants between 2031 and 2034, telling the Guardian that both labor and management had made concessions to stave off “a dangerous escalation of the conflict.”

Workers at VW's only U.S. assembly plant, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, joined the United Auto Workers in 2024 after years of trying, and ratified their first contract earlier this year. So far the cuts have not affected them.

It remains unclear how many more cuts are expected in Puebla. Since 2012, the plant has cut its workforce by 36 percent, Milenio reported, but it remains one of the largest employers in the state of Puebla today.

About 6,500 production workers are directly employed at the plant, which produces vehicles largely for export to the United States. Some 39,000 more work in the auto supply chain across the state, including 3,500 at the local Audi plant, and thousands more in the parts sector, producing seats, motor components, and electronics.

The offer that workers voted down in October included a guarantee that the 611 members laid off in September would be rehired in the future, and guaranteed jobs for the current workforce.

AUTO STRIKES RARE

Unlike in the U.S., where companies can try to continue operations during a strike by using managers and hiring replacement workers, under Mexican labor law, companies must cease all production at a struck plant. That gives Mexican unions tremendous potential power.

Yet strikes in the country’s auto industry, the world’s seventh-largest, have been exceedingly rare in recent decades, with most of the industry’s contracts held by employer-friendly “protection unions” who have been a key partner in Mexico’s low-wage development model. SITIAVW, one of the few independent unions, has won the highest wages in the industry.

In this case, however, some analysts have speculated that the company may welcome a strike.

In Mexico, employers must provide a justification to the government for laying off workers. Among those justifications can be losses incurred due to a strike, said SITIAVW adviser Willebaldo Gomez Zuppa: “It opens the door before the government to say, ‘That’s why I have to fire so many people.’”

“It’s not hard to go out on strike,” said Hugo Tlalpan, SITIAVW’s General Secretary. “The hard thing is ending it.”

ONE MINUTE LATE

The Puebla plant has been in operation since 1967. In the plant’s early days, workers were affiliated with the Confederation of Mexican Workers, or CTM, a labor confederation known for imposing pro-employer “protection contracts” on workers. But in 1972, workers split off from the CTM and formed the independent SITIAVW. Since then, the plant has seen a number of strikes and workplace actions—and nearly as many efforts from Mexico’s halls of power to subvert them.

In 1992, 14,500 workers at the Puebla facility struck to expel their union leadership that some workers felt was complicit in negotiating an employer-friendly contract. With the blessing of the Secretary of Labor, the company locked them out, then fired them. About 10,000 were rehired a day later, but under an agreement that imposed higher productivity targets, flexible scheduling, and a reduction in benefits.

In 2000, workers struck again, and once more their strike was quashed with support of Mexico’s labor authorities. Because workers went out on strike at 11:01 a.m. instead of exactly at 11, their stated strike deadline, the Federal Arbitration Board deemed their strike invalid. (They struck a year later and clinched 14.7 percent raises.)

The union is carefully weighing its options in this round of negotiations; so far, SITIAVW has extended its strike deadline four times. Most recently, just two days before the September 17 strike deadline, the union extended the deadline to Friday, October 2.

“This is an attack on one of the most robust collective bargaining agreements [in the country],” Gomez Zuppa said. What happens next will have repercussions for autoworkers throughout Mexico and Volkswagen workers across the world.

That’s when he realized the airport was a target for the TSA privatization program he had been reading about—the $13 billion Gold+ program. Harris, and his union Government Employees (AFGE) Local 556, swung into action.

Transportation Security Administration workers have been winning battles lately. Twice in two years the Trump administration has tried to cancel their union contract, and twice it has been stopped by the courts. Now things are mostly back to normal, with the contract in force and grievances being processed.

But Gold+ would undermine the union by outsourcing TSO jobs to private companies. As the dimensions of the plan became clear, Harris said his co-workers “felt like they had been kicked in the gut. You know, everything that they had worked for, their federal pension, careers, everything.”

Tampa is a model airport that consistently ranks at the top in customer satisfaction. That’s why TSA picked it for the Gold+ privatization effort, Harris said. “They don’t want to give it to a poor airport or a failing airport. That would be disastrous for TSA, right?”

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Harris first became aware of Gold+ from Against Giants, a website maintained by an ex-TSA agent. As he went down a research rabbit hole, a fellow steward took on some of his union work so he could focus.

Harris, a former police detective, was able to ferret out government documents to back up the union’s case. The agency “seemed like they were trying to do it under the cover of darkness,” he said. The program wasn’t officially acknowledged until July 21, and even then AFGE had to sue to get documents.

Although TSA insisted that the private jobs would pay the same, Harris found that they were saying the opposite to prospective contractors. He found that staff and wage cuts were essential to the program.

When confronted, TSA officials told the workers they didn’t know what the private companies would pay, but also reassured them that their pay wouldn’t change. “That kind of got me… We’re not being truthful about this, right?” Harris said.

The local’s president, Chris Finlay, had worked at a smaller airport at Sanford, Florida, where a private security company came in. At first they hired people at their former pay, but after a few weeks, “they brought them all in one by one. They said, sorry, we can no longer pay you that. We can only pay you this starting pay,” Harris said.

PRESSURE POINTS

The union figured out who would be deciding on Gold+ in Tampa—the airport’s board of directors—and then organized pressure from workers and the community.

The union argued that if privatization came in, salaries would be cut and that would affect local businesses: TSOs wouldn’t take their families out to dinner, or to a football game. If TSOs had to suddenly relocate, it would depress housing prices. Harris created pre-written letters from business owners, airport workers, and others, and union members asked everyone they knew to send the letters.

For workers, the stakes were clear, Harris said. When jobs are privatized, “we know there’s no union protections. But when you work for Homeland Security, when you work for TSA, it’s a career.”

That career was hard-won. Airports used a patchwork of private security companies until TSA was founded in 2001. But it was the union that built TSO jobs into sustainable ones, by winning first union representation and then a contract in 2011. Finally in 2023, TSA workers were included in the federal pay schedule. AFGE now represents 47,000 TSA workers.

Local 556 leadership met with the mayors of Tampa and neighboring St. Petersburg, along with congressional representatives. Airport workers raised questions and objections at in-person town hall meetings with TSA and airport leadership.

Finally, on August 24, Tampa airport leaders decided not to adopt the program. It was apparently a fatal blow—TSA cancelled the entire project right after Tampa’s decision. Private companies had already advertised jobs for the contracts they anticipated.

The union expects the push for privatization to continue, but workers definitively won this round.

This means more hours for union members—thanks to those who organized to enforce the contract, file grievances, and educate their co-workers. In this interview conducted by Caitlyn Clark of the reform group Essential Workers for Democracy, shop stewards Andrea Reynolds and Kristen Jackson explain how they did it.

Essential Workers for Democracy: What is Retail Odyssey and why is it a problem?

Andrea Reynolds: Retail Odyssey is a nonunion third-party contractor that solely services Kroger stores. Normally RO does things like rearranging a store layout or auditing whether products are displayed the way the brand wants.

A few months ago, the Kroger Central Division here in Indiana developed a new program utilizing RO employees to stock direct store delivery vendor items on weekends. [DSD items are delivered straight to the store by the supplier, rather than coming through a Kroger warehouse.]

Why is this a problem? Kroger has employees who need hours. This isn't “extra help.” Kroger wants to phase nonunion third parties into the stores to cut hours of its union employees. If we don't speak up, it will only get worse. We’ve seen this happen already with cut fruit vendors, outdoor floral products, floor cleaning, and gift cards, just to name a few.

How did you and your co-workers start taking on Retail Odyssey?

Reynolds: We immediately started gathering as much accurate information as we could and passing it along to our co-workers. We shared information in our Facebook group and we shared flyers with our co-workers.

We wanted them to know why this was a problem and what they could do about it. The company wants us to think that third parties are there to make our jobs easier. But time and time again, we see our hours cut and wonder why.

We also passed along the feedback of our vendors. Their products were being damaged, mixed with other vendors, and stocked incorrectly.

Kristen Jackson: Although in the pharmacy, I am not as impacted, my union brothers and sisters are. As a steward, I try my best to let others know what is wrong with RO taking our work.

I walked around and talked to my co-workers about what the RO workers were allowed to stock. I told them if they saw them, to please take pictures, talk to the RO workers, and be nice.

By having a standardized report form, members could make sure grievances were airtight.

How did you collect information to file grievances? How did you make sure grievances got filed and processed?

Reynolds: Retail Odyssey was scheduled to work Friday through Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. I had a lot of conversations with members I knew were normally there during those hours.

I instructed them to take photos, make note of the day, time, duration of stocking, what non-vendor products were stocked, and anyone who witnessed it. We had them send this info to our stewards or trusted employees who could contact our union rep.

Every week after the grievance was filed, we messaged our reps asking for status of the grievance. We didn't want it to fall through the cracks.

Jackson: I just went up to the RO workers, introduced myself as a steward, and let them know I would be taking pictures of them and why. I explained, “I'm not against you having a job. I'm here to document Kroger violating our contract.”

The RO workers were understanding, and would tell me that the manager told them to stock our product and let me file the grievances. The RO worker at my store location would tell me exactly what he stocked, so I could file the grievances effectively. We filed three grievances at my location.

What advice would you give to anyone dealing with non-union subcontracting?

Reynolds: Document, document, document! You need to prove there was a contract violation.

Talk with your co-workers about how to document. Contact your rep. Don't hesitate to ask for help from a steward or a trusted member.

You have power in your numbers. The more members speaking up, the better! We filed so many grievances in six months that the third-party DSD program has officially ended. When we fight, we win.

Andrea Reynolds and Kristen Jackson are UFCW Local 700 shop stewards in Kokomo and Zionsville, Indiana. Caitlyn Clark is the director of Essential Workers for Democracy.

The throng included large contingents from Laborers Locals 78 and 79, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, building services and airport workers from SEIU 32BJ, and health care workers from 1199SEIU. There were also union telecom workers, nurses, stagehands, municipal workers, retail workers, postal workers, electricians, grocery workers, office workers, and painters.

The NYC Central Labor Council initiative, called “Our Voice, Our Vote, Our Democracy,” aims to turn out union members and their communities to protest peacefully and to document intimidation of voters. It was announced just ahead of October 17, when the No Kings coalition held 3,000 events nationwide to promote early voting.

“We are demanding democratic and fair elections,” said SEIU 32BJ President Manny Pastreich in a statement to Labor Notes. “In anticipation of possible election sabotage, unions have hosted dozens of know-your-rights trainings, have organized hundreds of poll-watchers, and have created rapid-response networks.”

32BJ will mobilize members to monitor poll sites in swing districts on Long Island and the Hudson Valley. Pastreich added that if Trump takes unlawful action, unions are prepared for acts of civil disobedience.
In March, Trump issued an executive order to prohibit mail-in voting except by people on a list of eligible voters submitted by states to the Postal Service. But in September, the courts blocked implementation of this order.

The Trump administration has also tried to restrict voting access through the SAFE Act, which passed the House but was blocked in the Senate. It would have banned voter registration by mail, at motor vehicle offices, or online, and required voters to document their citizenship with a passport or birth certificate, along with a marriage license for women who changed their names.

On the steps of the post office, Joseph Martier, president of the New York Metro Area Local of the Postal Workers (APWU), led the crowd in chants: “Whose post office? The people’s post office!”

In the last election, Martier said, 48 million Americans cast their ballots by mail. He argued it’s “not a convenience” but “a vital way to participate in our democracy" for people in the military, students, people with disabilities, flight attendants, and the elderly.

“Our postal workers are trusted public servants,” he said. “They don’t deliver Democratic mail or Republican mail. They deliver America’s mail. Vote by mail is not a partisan tradition. It’s been part of our election system for generations. So we must ask: if this system is working, why are they making every effort to restrict it?”

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.

According to unofficial tallies posted online, Fain won more than two-thirds of the vote, against five opponents. His nearest competitor, incumbent vice president Rich Boyer, had 14 percent. Challenged ballots are still to be counted, and the election results are yet to be officially certified.

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.

The slate’s candidates for the three vice president spots were also elected with 20-25 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 it contested.

The slate will hold all the seats on the union’s International Executive Board except for one regional director.

Fain 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, 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.

MOTIVATORS

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 slate are the only ones that have a real program for the future of the union,” said historian Nelson Lichtenstein, author of Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit. “You’d think the other people would have come up with something aside from they want to reduce dues, which means basically cripple the new organizing.”

“The members chose Fain, despite the Monitor’s best efforts to create turbulence, because we’re ready to fight for retirement health care and protection from A.I. layoffs in 2028,” said Gary Chynoweth, vice chair of the reform network UAW Member Action, in a statement. “Our work now is to keep helping members step up as leaders in a union that’s ready to fight.”

KEEP ON TRACK

UAW Local 551 member Candyla Brown is one of 5,000 workers at Ford’s assembly plant in Chicago. She said she backed the United UAW slate to keep the union on track in 2028, to win pensions, post-retirement health care, and pay bumps that keep up with inflation.

To win these demands, “we need strong leadership,” she said. “We had a good experience with the 2023 strike, and I’ve been watching the new organizing efforts,” she said. “I think the UAW has come a long way since Fain got into office.”

She pointed to her own local’s successful organizing of nurses at her plant and a narrowly lost election at Julian Electric, a parts plant that supplies Ford, as examples of how the union is devoting resources to organize, even if some campaigns have come up short. She said organizing in the South is another bright spot. Volkswagen workers in Tennessee voted to join the UAW in 2024 and won a first contract earlier this year, becoming the first unionized foreign-owned auto assembly plant in the South.

Jessica Acosta of Ford Local 249 outside of Kansas City said she voted for Fain and his slate because she's seen transparency at the top of the union and wants to see the same in her local, where there was a contested election recently. “I want to know what’s going on,” she said. “I don’t want to be left in the dark.” Her top priority is winning pensions, though she recognizes that’s a tough demand to win.

At Daimler Truck in North Carolina, Jon Greene, president of Local 3520, said workers are building about 80 trucks a day, after winning a new record contract in 2024 with 25 percent wage bumps and job security.

Their contract expires in March 2028. In the next one, Local 3520 wants to win more product for the plant to ensure job security, especially after Daimler shut down a Freightliner truck plant in Oregon. But the company is slated to open another plant on the East Coast in 2029. “So it's important that we put the right people in place, or keep them in place, who know what they're doing to get us to 2028,” he said.

He said Daimler has staffed up its labor relations personnel in preparation for another showdown, and corporate HR has been closely following the election. “We tripped them up with the last contract,” said Greene. “It wasn't any more of that friendly bargaining that had been happening over the years with International, so we caught them off guard.”

TEMP WORKERS CONVERTED

Kirk Hoddinott started as a temp line worker in 2020 at Toledo Jeep in Ohio, building Jeep Wranglers and Gladiators. Toledo Jeep was one of the plants that launched the Stand-Up Strike, which forced Stellantis to convert all temporary workers to permanent roles after nine months on the job. Hoddinott became one of 1,957 temps at Stellantis who were converted within three months of ratification.

In spite of the 2023 contract’s big gains, he said, the lingering effects of past corruption scandals contribute to cynicism among Local 12 members who blame reps for poor communication in grievance handling. “People still think that the union is in bed with the company because they feel that they're not being represented as strongly as they want to be,” said Hoddinott.

“I would like to see more communication through our union from top to bottom, and back from bottom to top,” he said, “because I think that the company is talking to each other, and they're making a game plan. I think we should be doing the same thing.”

Nonetheless, Hoddinott said he believes Fain has made “good progress” and “I want to see another term and see how much more progress that he can really make.”

Hoddinott’s top priorities are post-retirement health insurance and job security around automation. “Every person that works there for more than 10 years is going to have wear and tear in their body that you're going to have permanent health problems from,” he said. Before the massive concessions of 2007, Big 3 retirees had company-paid health insurance till they were eligible for Medicare. Those hired since then no longer do.

He worries when he reads news stories about humanoid robots at BMW plants. At the Jeep complex, “they have a robot that can go up and down the racks and look at inventory to try to find parts,” he said, “and they are telling me that so far it hasn't taken any jobs.”

RENEWED MANDATE

With a renewed mandate, the pressure is on Fain’s team to organize members to step up when contracts expire at the Big 3 automakers on May 1, 2028.

In 2023, the companies were caught off guard, accustomed to a sedate strike, if any, and modest union demands. When the union launched a spreading strike against all three companies at once, with more plants walking out week by week, company bargainers were blindsided. They gave up more in that one contract than they had in the previous four contracts combined.

They will likely be better prepared for May Day 2028. Unions may face another obstacle in 2028—in an election year, Democratic politicians traditionally bring heavy pressure not to rock the boat, fearing blame from voters. In 2023, though, a poll found 78 percent of Americans supported the UAW’s strike.

Some expensive union demands were left on the table last time: pensions and retiree health insurance for workers hired after the big concessions of 2007-2009, and protections against mandatory overtime and automation.

Flush with victory in fall 2023, Fain urged other unions to line up their contracts with the Big 3’s, for a united assault on corporate coffers.

Domanick Moss, a member of Local 1853 at General Motors’ Spring Hill, Tennessee, assembly plant, said he backed United UAW because it built a broad coalition and set a goal of preparing for a potential May Day 2028 general strike.

“I think that we have a solid ground laid in terms of how we've been connecting with other unions,” Moss said. “If enough of us go on strike, we could get more attention on universal health care. I would like to see Medicare for All and the PRO Act passed. I would like to see consequences for corporations doing rampant automation.” (The PRO Act would make it easier for workers to organize and secure contracts.)

Moss said his plant’s chassis department in general assembly lost 38 jobs as a direct result of automation over the last couple of years. “Cameras replaced quality gates,” he said. “All of the seat loading is done by robots now, and my team was previously loading seats.”

The Spring Hill assembly plant builds electric vehicles like the Cadillac Lyric, and they aren’t selling as well after Trump and congressional Republicans eliminated a $7,500 tax credit. “When the price of those electric cars went up about $8,000 overnight, we started selling less of them,” he said.

Ditching the tax credit also had an impact at the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant, where Zach Costello, who backed Fain, said “there have been massive cutbacks.” Volkswagen stopped producing the company's ID.4 SUV in April, instead ramping up production of the gas-powered Atlas SUV.

GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF UAW

The election results are a sharp rebuke to the government-appointed monitor, Neil Barofsky, whose original mandate was to oversee clean-up of the endemic corruption that sent 13 union officials to jail.

Barofsky developed a strong antagonism to Fain when the UAW Executive Board passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in late 2023, which the monitor said could be seen as “antisemitic.” Fain resisted Barofsky’s attempts to reverse that stance. Ever since, Barofsky has issued a series of reports criticizing Fain and siding with his opponents on the Board. Some UAW members who followed the drama drew cynical conclusions, but apparently most voters found Fain’s actions spoke louder than the monitor’s words.

Barofsky's mandate is set to end in early 2027, but the consent decree keeps open the possibility of extending the monitorship. If Barofsky's previous behavior is any indication, he may push to stay in place longer.

Fain’s opponents made much of the monitor’s reports, which accused Fain of misdeeds including retaliating against Boyer and Mock, after he relieved them of some of their major responsibilities. Opponents spent most of their energy attacking him personally and detailing their own grievances, rather than talking about the direction of the union. Their campaigns did not have much reach.

Fain, on the other hand, reminded members of the union’s achievements and tried to keep the disagreements from looking personal.

Despite encouraging leadership at the top, the UAW has a long way to go to become a member-driven union that consistently takes on the boss. While Fain has charted a new direction, much of the union bears the scars of decades of concessions, or is still stuck in the old, company-friendly ways of operating. That includes seeing the union structure as a career ladder, a way to get off the factory floor.

Years of one-party rule means that the bench of members able and willing to push the union in a new direction is still shallow. That has the potential to change in locals where the International has brought big resources for contract campaigns and strikes.

The UAW Member Action network is slowly working, through education and trainings, to build up the bench. After this election, it looks like the UAW will continue to be back in the fight.

This article has been updated from its original version to reflect the most recent election results.

The Delivery Protection Act would require Amazon, alongside FedEx and other companies, to directly employ drivers rather than rely on third-party subcontractors. It would also establish safety, training, and labor standards for delivery drivers.

As of October 3, workers and allies had knocked on 11,446 doors across the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, according to the Teamsters.

Across the country, 4,500 tiny companies act as Amazon’s delivery service partners (DSPs)—meaning these contractors are the nominal employers, even while the logistics giant retains control.

“For years, Amazon has relied on a convoluted subcontracting system that denies last-mile drivers the protections other workers get, while maintaining extraordinary control over their schedules, workloads, and uniforms,” said Julie Su, New York City’s deputy mayor for economic justice, in a statement.

Treating DSP delivery drivers as Amazon’s direct employees would make the company responsible for wage and safety protections and other legal liabilities. A similar bill is under consideration in Chicago.

LEGISLATIVE BATTLEGROUND

Tiffany Cabán, a DSA member and a city councilor representing Queens, sponsored the Delivery Protection Act. It has majority support in the 51-member chamber.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other elected officials have thrown their support behind the legislation, saying it would help boost wages, improve working conditions, and raise standards and safety across the logistics sector.

But multimillionaire Council Speaker Julie Menin isn’t on board. And Jessica Schumer, the daughter of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, is leading the lobbying fight to defeat the bill.

Amazon and other subcontractors are fighting tooth and nail. Amazon has threatened that if the bill passes, it will pull out of New York, forcing customers to pick up orders at hubs in New Jersey.

New Yorkers have been exposed to voluminous mailers and videos claiming that delivery will get slower and more expensive. Amazon has spared no expense, shelling out more than $5 million on lobbying, television and social media ads to defeat the bill. By proposing to make DSP operators extinct, Amazon says, the bill is "threatening the small businesses that deliver to customers.”

The Teamsters represent 330,000 warehouse and package car drivers at UPS. Amazon deliveries constitute a parallel nonunion system that not only undermines wages and working conditions across the logistics industry, but also threatens the volume that union workers deliver.

Amazon workers with support from the Teamsters and other unions have been organizing for years, but as they have hit roadblocks, they have taken the war into municipal government.

Amazon’s army of union-busters and lawyers cost the company $26 million in 2026 alone to intimidate workers and file endless court appeals in a war of attrition. The company’s signature move is to abruptly sever ties with a DSP after workers organize—as it did with a DSP that voluntarily recognized a union of drivers and dispatchers who joined the Teamsters in 2023 in Palmdale, California.

So workers are trying a different angle to constrain the behemoth through legislative fights, educating voters on regulations to level the playing field.

NO MORE ROUTES, NO JOB

“I’d just say that the threat [to workers] is bigger without the bill, because Amazon is getting away with so much,” said Latrice Johnson, a former delivery driver who worked out of a Maspeth, Queens, warehouse called DBK4.

Last year she and 149 co-workers were laid off with less than a day’s notice when Amazon suddenly shut down her DSP. She recalled hearing when she came in to work, “There's no more routes, so you no longer have a job.”

A month earlier, she had received a top award for her work performance. “It was a slap in the face,” she said. The job was a lifeline for her to provide for her daughter.

The Teamsters charge that Amazon violated labor law, retaliating against the DSP drivers for organizing. In all, by cancelling DSP contracts, Amazon has terminated the jobs of nearly 500 delivery workers working out of the DBK4 delivery station, where drivers for multiple DSPs had participated in a strike.

Johnson has been knocking on doors to educate voters and encourage them to contact their city council person to support the bill. She finds that customers are surprised to hear stories like hers. They’re even more surprised and confused when she shares that DSP drivers like her technically don’t work for Amazon.

“I was confused, too, when I first started working, and they told me I don't work for Amazon,” she said. “We wear the vests. We drive the vans. We deliver the packages.

“I’m at the door talking to someone who probably orders from Amazon, and they’re like, ‘Wow, that's not right,’” she said.

ORGANIZING AMAZON DRIVERS

By making the drivers direct employees of Amazon, the bill would remove the company’s ability to so easily cancel their jobs—giving a boost to union organizing. It would also mean the buck would stop with Amazon to fulfill the other obligations of an employer, like providing a safe workplace and legally mandated benefits and breaks.

Amazon notched a major victory when the National Labor Relations Board this June found that the company was not a joint employer with DSPs, releasing it from responsibility for union-busting at subcontractors.

In these circumstances, workers might find organizing scary, but Johnson draws on her own experiences to stay motivated and bolster others' courage.

“I come from a struggle, so there's no standing down,” she said. “I'm always gonna speak up, but there’s still people out there who are in fear of losing their job, and I just want them to know—you could still lose your job without organizing.”

The Delivery Protection Act would also create safety and training standards.

Last year, NYC’s Office of the Comptroller found that crashes increased 78 percent in nearby areas after a last-mile facility opened up. Delivery drivers rush to meet Amazon’s punishing delivery quotas, putting themselves and the public in danger.

Amazon uses driver-facing cameras produced by the A.I. company Netradyne in its last-mile delivery network. The company says these cameras increase safety, but union organizer and Amazon DSP driver Jonathan Rosenblum has written that Netradyne feeds data points to an A.I. system to monitor, track, and evaluate drivers’ behavior. Now Amazon is piloting smart glasses to track workers' delivery in real time.

DRONES OVERHYPED

As Amazon delivery drivers advance on the ground, the company is fleeing to the skies.

The logistics giant announced plans in late August to expand drone deliveries to 500 U.S. cities and towns this year, offering an option for delivery within 30 minutes after an order is placed when the package is less than five pounds.

People aren’t pleased in a suburb outside Dallas where drones already dot the skies, “zipping over nearby houses, looking like a cross between a mechanical dragonfly and an X-wing fighter, and buzzing like a battalion of bees,” according to the New York Times.

Besides the noise, Texans are worried that the drones are invading their privacy. “If it’s your backyard and you want to sunbathe naked, that’s your property and you do you,” Stephanie Puri, a researcher in the video game industry, told the New York Times. “But, oh, Amazon can see you.”

Workers and organizers said the drone news is part distraction, part labor discipline, part fearmongering.

“Amazon is always trying to put fear in the hearts of workers by either talking about moving the work out of New York, or drones, or robots,” said Amazon Teamster organizer Antonio Rosario. “But I think these companies don't think far enough. I hear them say things like ‘Robots don't get sick,’ or ‘Robots don't need to be paid.’ But they forget that they also don't pay taxes and they also don't buy the shit that they're selling.”

In fact, the drone program, which is slated to deliver 1 million packages in 2026, is a pinprick when compared to the 6 billion packages delivered in the U.S. last year by an army of drivers—around 18 million packages a day.

The logistics scholar Benjamin Fong is skeptical Amazon will scale up drone deliveries because of technical difficulties. “Robots work well at scale in highly controlled environments,” wrote Fong in Jacobin.

He said the company is aware of the limitations outside the warehouse, given the variability of obstacles a robot or drone may encounter in the outside world. Online videos show Amazon drones dropping a package into a pool and smashing into an apartment building.

Amazon began drone testing in 2015. Its promises of expansion turned into shutdowns in 2024 and pauses in 2025.

“For suburban areas of the right density, it could become a regular feature, i.e., a huge annoyance that city councilors will hear a great deal about,” wrote Fong. “But even Amazon’s own stated goals for the program are less than 6 percent of deliveries by 2030—a goal that they are most certainly not going to meet.”