This weekend, UAW President Shawn Fain visited UAW 4811 members at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. UAW members at LBL and across UC do the basic research that enables EV manufacturing and all the clean energy technology that will power the just transition. Addressing a crowd of workers gathered to prepare for student worker bargaining in 2025, President Fain discussed our International Union’s bold plans to organize non-union auto plants and the enormous power academic workers and autoworkers have when we work together. In that same speech, President Fain said that our 2022 strike was a key inspiration for the 2023 Stand Up Strike.
UAW President Shawn Fain at the UAW 4811 Berkeley office.
Across the country, higher ed workers and autoworkers are organizing together. Today, 4,300 workers at the Volkswagen Chattanooga plant in Tennessee announced that a supermajority of VW workers have shown their support for forming a union with UAW. They are now filing a petition with the NLRB requesting a union election. Autoworkers at VW in Chattanooga plant assemble ID.4 EVs, cars powered by the very battery technology that many UC workers research for a living. In fact, some of the UAW Region 6 organizers who helped UC GSRs win their union are now helping VW workers win theirs.
UAW President Shawn Fain with Volkswagen workers at the Chattanooga plant.
As long as we work together, workers have the power to reform higher ed, remake the auto industry, and build a just, sustainable future.
In solidarity,
Rafael Jaime
Co-President, UAW Local 4811