Dear UAW sibling,

This year’s Political Action and Leadership Conference brought together more than 500 UAW members and workers on new organizing campaigns from across Region 6. Through political education sessions, skill workshops, topical strategy sessions, and subregional planning meetings, members took stock of the current political moment – how we got here, what challenges we face, and what opportunities we can take advantage of to continue building power to advance our positive agenda. As we are already clearly seeing, the Trump administration is primarily motivated by expanding the wealth and power of billionaires at the expense of working people – profiting on the backs of workers, scapegoating immigrants and trans people, attempting to divide working people across identity, and raiding public funds for critical services to line their own pockets.

Political Action and Leadership Conference, UAW Region 6, Pico Rivera, CA

Despite all these challenges, a better world is possible. UAW members have the tools we need to build a powerful movement oriented around a common agenda, by and for workers, that cuts across differences of race, gender, and nationality, and that centers public health, housing, and jobs – not giveaways for billionaires and corporations. At the Leadership Conference, members discussed how we can build the leverage to make that vision happen:

Investing in new organizing to unionize thousands of new workers and grow our movement. Members at the conference set a goal of building worker-led campaigns to organize 15,000 new workers in Region 6 in 2025.
Building membership and leadership in existing Locals to grow capacity for militant contract campaigns and action inside and outside our workplaces. Members at the conference set a goal of organizing 70% membership in every Local in 2025.
Expanding political power with bold legislative programs across the Region, growing independent political resources, and electing working people who will champion our issues to office. Members at the conference set a goal for 2025 to sign up 2,225 additional members for the UAW voluntary political fund (VCAP) for $10/month.

Against the challenges working people face today, the work to build a political economy that truly works for workers will take every member’s active participation – in developing ongoing power analysis, in building action plans, in having hard 1-1 conversations with coworkers, and more – and will cross multiple topics and tactics. Keep reading to learn more about how this all came together at the Leadership Conference, and the path forward UAW members are forging together.

Ary Smith, Local 2320, Legal Services of Northern CA

Advancing a Worker-Led Political Economy

The Leadership Conference featured a panel of speakers who are actively thinking about how to chart a new popular political economy, with each focused on a different dimension of major issues from the November election: immigration, inflation, trade relations, and climate justice. Each spoke about how we got to the current moment, how these issues intersect with each other, and most importantly, how we, as union members, can use this knowledge to fight for a better world.

Priyanka Mohanty, Executive Director of UAW Center for Manufacturing a Green Economy (CMGE): “We need to build and organize our own political agenda to combat the next four years, to build power, and to push forward our vision – strong unions, healthcare for all, welcoming all our diversity, and a just worker-led green economy. We need to boldly fight against the seeds of hate and distrust being sown in our communities. Because change is possible. But it’s up to us.”

Daniel Aldana Cohen, former member of GSOC-UAW, co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal: “These are really hard times for a lot of us. And you don’t have to be alone in it. If you’re so lucky as to be in a union or in a union campaign, coming together with other people, you don’t just feel better, but you are literally building the power to change the conditions that make you feel bad.”

Ximena Anleu Gil, Local 4811 Vice President, Postdoc, Plant Sciences, UC Davis: “The most important thing is to remember: we have rights. And we can build even more power if we come together as union members, as workers, as working class.”

Andrew Elrod, former member of UAW 2865, editor and researcher in New York City: “I think the West Coast can lead the way. In this moment when the things happening at the federal level are going to be disadvantageous to working people, showing how the Western states can empower workers in the class struggle is more important than ever.”

Tobita Chow, Director of Politics and Global Strategy at 128 Collective: “Trump's natural inclination is to divide workers between countries and set U.S. workers against workers in other countries. The alternative is international solidarity…and I think a pretty unique role that Region 6 can play is that just in virtue of the kinds of workplaces that are organized within the Region and the kind of workers that are organized there…that that base, by its very nature, creates really significant opportunities to make stronger bets on building international solidarity. And I think that could play a really critical role in the years ahead.”

Justin Jarvis, Local 492, Portland Ford Parts Distribution

Growing Local Leadership & Membership

At the Leadership Conference, Members spoke about the challenge of getting people involved in their union, particularly the issues of reaching out to our coworkers and demonstrating to them that there is power in a union (and that, indeed, they are the union). To address this, members discussed how to divide up their workplace and make sure there are people within every area who are comfortable having conversations about the importance of participation and membership, and who can identify workplace problems as they appear.

Members strategized how to develop these visible union member-leaders who can move their coworkers to action, and vehicles for that action: notably for C/GPU at CalTech they have been doing this through motivating members to participate through their (now ratified) contract campaign, for UAW Local 3555 Las Vegas gaming workers it has been around organizing for smoke-free casinos, and for UAW 4811 at the UC system it has been working towards 10% statewide participation in the Contract Action Team as they prepare for bargaining later this year. Organizers left this breakout armed with strategies to build these campaigns and others through both member-to-member organizing and building structure for member-leader development initiatives.

Alex Smith, Local 230, Ontario Mopar Parts Distribution, Veteran

Building a Movement to Defend Public Research

Help defend public research funding from billionaires – send your Congressional Reps a letter now! In their first few weeks in office, the Trump Administration has issued a barrage of announcements that attempt to take back federal funding from critical public programs including NIH research, Veterans Affairs, the Environmental Protection Agency, and more. While they claim to be working to save public money, their actions make clear that their primary interest is expanding the wealth and power of those who already have the most – billionaires and corporations – at the expense of working people’s health, jobs, and education.

UAW members across Region 6 have spent this month actively building a mass movement that has the power not just to defeat these attacks on critical public services and lifesaving public research, but also to proactively advance a political system that really works for working people. As part of a nationwide wave of action last week, Locals 4121, 4811, 4591, 4123, and 4929 held rallies, member meetings, and organizing conferences to build widespread momentum and continue pressuring elected officials to end the Trump admin’s disastrous research cuts. You can find more information on the Region 6 webpage.

New Organizing to Build Our Movement

Multiple strategy sessions at the Leadership Conference focused on new organizing opportunities and coordination in key sectors in the Region, including warehouses and parts distribution centers (PDCs), higher education and research, EVs and batteries, and aerospace. Together, members learned strategies from each other and made plans for expanding effective worker-led organizing in 2025. For example:

Warehouses and PDCs: Members at the Leadership Conference learned ways to start difficult organizing conversations, whether you are having a cold start, or you have contact on the inside. One of the first things we need to know in our warehouse organizing effort is, “What is in our backyard?” – essentially knowing what worksites in your area either directly affect your own worksite or affect an auto manufacturing plant nearby. Members across Region 6 learned both effective and ineffective ways to have an organizing conversation, and learned the effective phases of an organizing campaign, some of which include ways to develop leaders, as well as building that supermajority that is needed to demand recognition. Small group discussion included identifying nearby targets to organize as well as a follow up plan to reconnect with our Region 6 Reps.

Higher Ed and Research: In this strategy session, workers from different ongoing organizing campaigns in higher ed and research came together to make connections and share strategies for common challenges. Workers discussed a shared vision for our higher education system – one that works for students and workers and advances the public good – and how organizing and winning unionization campaigns is the fundamental basis for how we can advance that vision. After identifying shared challenges across campaigns, workers then broke out into small groups – based on which campaign phase they were at – to work through challenges specific to that phase, and strategies others have used to navigate them.

Marty Garcia, Local 76, Sacramento Fords Parts Distribution

Climate Justice as Class War: Join the Just Transition Committee!

Members at the conference discussed how a key piece of building independent working class power is expanding union density in green energy manufacturing and making the products affordable and accessible to all. The Region 6 Climate Justice Committee is rebooting this year as The Just Transition Committee to coordinate this work! JTC will meet on Thursday, February 27th at 6PM over Zoom. We will make plans to win policy that decarbonizes our economy and creates good union jobs in the EV and battery supply chain, offshore wind, heat pump manufacturing, and more! Fill out this short survey and check the box to receive the meeting information and get involved.

Atreya Dey, Local 4811, UC San Francisco

Immigration & Gender Justice

Members at the Leadership Conference convened at multiple points to discuss and strategize advancing a strong social justice agenda as a union. In political education sessions, members learned updates on the policy landscape for immigrant, international worker, gender, and reproductive justice and practices having organizing conversations with coworkers about these topics. Then during a longer strategy session, members divided into breakouts to coordinate plans around different tactics we can use together to build leverage to advance these issues: through contract enforcement and bargaining; policy work; city, county, and state legislation; and direct action. Members made plans for creating toolkits for planning & running know your rights trainings, Joint Labor Management meetings, direct actions. This work is ongoing through the Region 6 Gender, Civil, and Human Rights Committee (GCHRC), with subgroups focused on Immigration & International Worker Justice and Gender Justice.

Coming out of the conference, the gender justice subgroup of the GCHRC organized a phonebank where members called elected reps about opposing HR 28, which would change Title IX to define gender as sex assigned at birth and threaten the non-discrimination protections of both trans workers – and anyone else – on the basis of sex at universities and other institutions. Coming up next, join an action meeting to submit public comments en masse against the Dept of State’s proposal to take away trans people’s right to accurate legal documentation, and join the next GCHRC meeting on Monday 3/10 from 6-7pm.

Free Speech & Justice in Palestine

Building on more than a year of action by UAW members in Region 6 and across the country to demand justice in Palestine, at the Leadership Conference members discussed strategies for continuing to advance justice as union members, both inside and beyond our contracts. Inside our contracts, members discussed strategies for using our contracts to protect free speech, as a critical part of ensuring workers’ rights to take action for Palestine and other matters of justice. Beyond our contracts, members discussed opportunities to build political leverage needed to advance key votes at the national level, including identifying potential champions to work with and develop looking towards the midterms. These discussions and planning will be ongoing in Subregional Political Workgroups and at this spring’s Injury to One is an Injury to All Conference.

Mia Roberts, CAPS/Local 1115, CA Dept of Fish & Wildlife

Message from Region 6 Director Mike Miller

Last month over 500 UAW members gathered at the Region 6 office in Pico Rivera, California for the annual Political Action and Leadership Conference. Our goal was to take stock of what we accomplished in 2024 and to look forward to our agenda for 2025. For those unable to attend the conference, our many successes in the past year were documented in our Annual Report, which is available to download here.

The labor movement, and the UAW in particular, has always faced headwinds from the powerful and the greedy – and the current political regime in Washington will certainly present challenges for organizing and the pursuit of the working class’ political agenda. With an array of executive orders coming at dizzying speed from the Trump administration, people may feel dispirited, disoriented, and overwhelmed. It is necessary, however, to maintain a long-term perspective, and to appreciate the union’s history as we struggle in the current context of reactionary politics. We have been here before.

UAW Region 6 history is rife with examples of union members standing up to power to defend workers and pursue what’s right. During the first Trump administration UAW members responded swiftly to Trump’s various racist executive orders. When federal authorities began detaining people at airports across the country in 2017 pursuant to Trump’s Muslim Travel Ban, UAW members joined thousands of people in protest all across the region – at airports in Seattle, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles – to block the travel ban for a number of years. UAW members once again mobilized in 2020 to thwart Trump’s racist, xenophobic deportation order for international workers issued during the pandemic.

As these examples show, when UAW members unite in solidarity and action, we achieve results! And we must keep this history in mind as we fight to advance our agenda in the current political climate. Trump is pushing destructive austerity to fund tax cuts for the rich. If he is allowed to get away with it, the cuts in spending and social provision would be devastating to our economy and to the working class – immiserating millions, throwing thousands of people out of jobs, and destroying research in the public interest.

The cuts to federal spending that we now face are “reckless and inhumane” – and we must stop them. Not only would they affect countless UAW members whose work depends on NIH funding, but Trump’s federal funding freeze is, as U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal has said, “unmitigated cruelty”: it will negatively affect seniors, veterans, the poor, and the hungry, all while jeopardizing important public goods from cancer research to children’s education.

This month UAW Locals 4811 and 4121 swiftly backed a lawsuit brought by several state attorneys general, including UAW-endorsees Rob Bonta (CA) and Nick Brown (WA), challenging Trump’s draconian and unconstitutional executive order. Local 4121 staged a 450-person rally in Seattle and Local 4811 organized rallies across California against Trump’s funding freezes, while other Region 6 academic workers have joined phonebanks to demand an end to the cuts. Our members are fighting because NIH funding has huge economic benefits for our communities: every single dollar invested into NIH research equates to $2.46 in economic activity. In 2023, NIH funds supported over 85,000 jobs in Region 6 and created nearly $20 billion in economic activity.

We must be steadfast in our opposition to Trump’s slash-and-burn agenda of austerity and autocracy. Our involvement as a movement of working people is more important than ever, especially given the fast-paced fury of Trump’s actions and the weak opposition to it by politicians in Washington D.C. It is abundantly clear that unions and social movements must lead the opposition to Trump’s autocratic and racist policies, and that we are the ones who must carry forward a progressive agenda for the working class.

And there is certainly a popular agenda to pursue. Clear majorities across the political spectrum see several Federal programs positively: Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP, renewable energy, housing, health care, etc. So while many in the Administration are hell-bent on killing programs that benefit the working class to fund tax cuts for the rich, we in the labor movement must keep pushing a humane and dignified agenda, joining with other organizations and social movements to create a broad base of opposition to draconian cuts and a constituency for progressive policy and reform. Our working class agenda must fight for universal healthcare, childcare and paid family leave, free public education, affordable housing, union jobs, clean energy, and a Green New Deal.

Upcoming events

Region 6 Gender Justice & Civil Human Rights Committee meeting: March 10, 6-7pm via Zoom. Open to all Region 6 members! RSVP here.
Region 6 Education & Communications Committee meeting: March 21, 12-1pm. Open to all Region 6 members! RSVP here.
Region 6 Political Action (CAP/PAC) meeting: March 20, 6-7pm via zoom. Open to all Region 6 members! RSVP here.
The UAW Women in Leadership Conference will be April 3-6 at the Pat Greathouse Center in Ottawa, IL. Contact your Local for more info and to join. Attendance is limited.
The UAW Health & Safety Conference will be April 27-May 2 at the Walter & May Reuther UAW Family Education Center in Onaway, MI. Contact your Local for more information and to join.
UAW Higher Education Council meeting: June 21-22, 2025 at the Region 6 office in Pico Rivera, CA. Contact your Local for more information and to join.
Save the date! Region 6 Summer School will be July 24-27 in Los Angeles. More info to come.
The full 2025 UAW Education Department conference schedule is now available, with multiple options upcoming at the Walter & May Reuther Family Education Center in Onaway, MI. Contact your Local for more info and to join.

Forging a Worker-Led Political Economy