United Auto Workers

The UAW emerged during the expansion of mass-production industry and the organizing drive of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Early organizers confronted company unions, anti-union surveillance, and violent resistance in automobile plants. The decisive breakthrough came with the Flint sit-down strike of 1936–1937, when workers occupied General Motors factories in Michigan and compelled recognition of the union after a 44-day confrontation.²

The settlement established the UAW as a major bargaining representative in the automobile industry. Walter Reuther, who became its best-known postwar leader, promoted industry-wide standards, stronger workplace representation, and social benefits alongside wage gains. The union’s growth helped make collective bargaining a central institution of industrial relations in the United States.²

The UAW is built from local unions that represent workers at particular plants, campuses, public institutions, or other workplaces. Local members elect officers and workplace representatives, while the international union coordinates organizing, contract negotiations, education, legal support, and major strikes. Constitutional authority ultimately rests with the membership and the union’s convention structure.¹

Most UAW contracts establish wages, benefits, hours, seniority, grievance procedures, and rules for discipline and workplace safety. In the United States, much of this bargaining operates within the framework of the National Labor Relations Act, which protects employees’ rights to organize and bargain collectively while defining unfair labor practices. Canadian UAW bargaining is shaped by provincial labor law rather than the U.S. statute.

The UAW’s public identity remains closely tied to bargaining with the “Big Three” automakers: Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and Stellantis. These negotiations affect pay, health coverage, pensions, temporary-worker status, plant investment, and the allocation of new vehicle technologies. The union also represents workers in aerospace, agricultural machinery, higher education, and other sectors, extending beyond traditional assembly lines.¹

In 2023, the UAW used a selective “Stand Up Strike” against all three automakers, expanding stoppages at chosen facilities rather than closing every plant at once. The tactic increased pressure while preserving strike resources and produced tentative agreements that included substantial wage increases and other changes after member ratification.

The UAW’s history includes organizing campaigns far outside Detroit’s automobile plants. Its jurisdiction has included aircraft production, farm-equipment manufacturing, university employees, graduate workers, casino employees, museum workers, and other professional or service occupations, reflecting the decline of a single-industry conception of union membership.¹

The sit-down method was also a distinctive form of industrial protest: workers occupied the workplace, preventing replacement labor from operating machinery, but faced serious legal and safety risks. Later UAW campaigns combined strikes with elections, public messaging, and political lobbying. The union is affiliated with the AFL-CIO and participates in wider debates over trade, automation, electric vehicles, labor law, and the transition of manufacturing employment.³

Collective bargaining

Negotiation between workers, usually through a union, and an employer over wages, working conditions, benefits, and workplace rules.

Local union

A geographically or institutionally defined UAW unit representing workers at a particular employer or group of workplaces.

Sit-down strike

A strike in which workers remain inside and occupy their workplace, preventing normal operations.

Stand Up Strike

The UAW’s 2023 selective-strike strategy, in which additional workplaces were called out as bargaining pressure increased.

Big Three

The U.S. automobile manufacturers traditionally identified as Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis.