Two years ago, Shawn Fain led the United Automobile Workers union through simultaneous strikes at three large carmakers, a strategy that helped produce big gains in wages and benefits for the union’s members.
Mr. Fain was hailed by progressives and Democratic politicians like former President Joesph R. Biden Jr. who saw him as the vanguard of a new generation of labor leaders who could get more workers to sign up to join unions, reversing the long slide in the labor movement’s ranks. He campaigned for Mr. Biden and later former Vice President Kamala Harris and exchanged insults with President Trump.
Now, however, a small but vocal faction in the U.A.W. is gearing up for a long-shot bid to oust Mr. Fain as he prepares to run for re-election next year.
The dissident workers’ main complaints about Mr. Fain are rooted in internal union matters like budgets and his treatment of other union officials, rather than in grand philosophical disagreements about labor and political issues.
The people seeking to oust him say that he has spent too much of the union’s money on organizing campaigns in the South and other initiatives they consider misguided. They contend that he has improperly stripped two board members of critical duties and say he failed to prevent a Michigan-based automaker from laying off thousands of workers.
“We’re spending more money than we’re taking in,” said David Pillsbury, 51, who works at a General Motors truck plant in Flint, Mich., and is a leader of the movement to remove Mr. Fain. “Shawn promised transparency and a lot of things, and none of that has come to fruition.”
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The post Shawn Fain, Who Pledged to Reform U.A.W., Faces Internal Dissent appeared first on New York Times.
