August Newsletter: Fall Political Action, Vote in IEB Election
Dear UAW Sibling,
Over the past month, thousands of UAW members across Region 6 have been taking action to build a movement to advance working class needs through mass political action, contract campaigns, and new organizing. This fall across Region 6, members are taking action on priority political campaigns to shift power at all levels of government to the working class. Keep reading to learn more about recent updates and plug in to ongoing work!
The UAW International Executive Board election is also underway. You should have received your ballot in the mail – submit your vote ASAP! If you haven’t received your ballot, request a replacement TODAY to make sure you get it in time to vote. Find more info and deadlines in the section below.
Political Action in Region 6
Across the U.S., more and more working class people are taking action to demand that the government work for the working class, at every level. We need elected leaders who are ready to ensure affordable housing for all, end the homelessness crisis, expand affordable transit, ensure healthcare as a right, advance climate justice, and so much more. And as recent progressive wins have shown, all of this and more is possible when we engage in strategic political action, including by electing working class candidates who have the political will to advance working class needs.
This year, UAW members in Region 6 are joining together to tip the scales in favor of the needs and interests of workers from the local to state and federal levels of government. In Los Angeles, UAW members are ready to build a city that works for the working class, and have been turning out in force at regular neighborhood canvasses to elect Nithya Raman mayor. At the Congressional level, members are fighting to elect candidates like Randy Villegas, Mai Vang, Marni Von Wilpert, and Mary Peltola to shift power in Congress and advance a working class agenda of affordability, healthcare, housing, childcare, climate policy, and putting an end to the country’s endless wars. In Nevada and Alaska, UAW workers are also fighting to elect governors who will support workers in forming unions and bargaining strong contracts. And many more priority campaigns are ongoing around the Region.
There is much at stake in the upcoming elections. UAW members know that the status quo isn’t serving us. The Trump administration has been remarkable in the scope of its cruelty and disregard for the working class. The catalog of anti-union and anti-worker measures is too long to list here, the effects are too familiar: higher prices for food, gasoline, housing, medical care, college tuition, and all kinds of goods and services. Meanwhile, the administration continues to squander resources on war and violence both domestically and abroad. As of this moment, the Iran war alone has cost consumers well over $106 billion in added fuel costs due to the disruptions in gasoline and diesel – all while the administration has stripped and defunded alternative energy programs.
It is time we not only fight back against the anti-worker agenda pursued by the current administration on behalf of the billionaire class it faithfully serves, but also advance a positive working class vision of society. This political season UAW members have a real chance to turn things around. Trump’s anti-worker agenda is deeply unpopular, but we cannot assume the elections will just take care of themselves. We must create the wave. Join fellow UAW members in mobilizing the vote for a working class agenda. Sign up here to get involved in Region 6’s GOTV efforts.
UAW International Elections: Ballots Are Out!
Ballots are out for the UAW International Executive Board election! All UAW members in good standing should have received your ballot in the mail. If you haven’t yet, submit your vote ASAP. If you didn’t receive your ballot, request a replacement at uawvote.com. September 23 is the final day to request a replacement, but don’t wait! It can take time to receive and return your ballot, and all must be received by October 5 to be counted. Find more information at uawmonitor.com/elections.
Summary of upcoming election dates:
On or about August 21, 2026: The first distribution of mail-in ballots to the electorate.
September 23, 2026: Final date by which replacement ballots can be requested from the Election Vendor.
September 30, 2026: Deadline by which members must be in good standing in order to have their vote counted in the 2026 Election.
October 5, 2026: Deadline for all ballots to be received by the designated U.S. Post Office.
October 6, 2026: Vote tabulation begins (Rosemont, IL).
California Science Bond Advances!
This month lawmakers in California approved a $7.5 bond measure, which includes $750 million in facilities for CSU and $250 million in facilities for University of California. UAW members fought hard for the measure (SB 895) and have been taking action for months to help restore science funding cut by the Trump administration. Allies in Sacramento, including Scott Wiener, José Luis Solache, and Darshana Patel, moved the measure through both houses, passing the Assembly 60 to 6 and the Senate 28 to 9. Lifesaving research funding is one step closer to reality. It is now upon Governor Newsom to sign the bill, which would place it on the March 2028 ballot.
1,500 more University of California Staff File for UAW Representation
On September 1, 2026, Educational Specialists at UC (those working in Community Education Specialist, Public Education Specialist, and K-14 Academic Program Specialist titles) filed a union representation petition with the California Public Employment Relations Board. By doing so these workers continue to strengthen the collective voice of UC staff, more than 13,000 of whom have organized with UAW since 2025. Last year's historic contract for UC Research Public Service Professionals and Student Service Advising Professionals established a new step-based wage scale for UAW-represented titles, but important details still must be negotiated in 2027. Staff who are organizing now hope to build power to address long-standing compensation issues amongst staff: years of service, external market comparisons, and equity among similar positions among other issues.
Region 6 Retirees Council Meeting
Retirees are the backbone of our union, and last week, retired members from around Region 6 came together in Pico Rivera for the Region 6 Retirees Council Meeting to connect and discuss how to advance a just future for all working class people. Retirees learned about threats to Medicare, discussed upcoming political action to address these issues and advance working class needs, and strategized ways to regularly connect across the Region. Congratulations to the Region 6 Retirees Council Executive Board elected at the meeting!
Seattle Bans Rental Junk Fees
This month, Seattle passed a major win for housing affordability: a ban on landlords charging “junk fees” like pet rent, administrative fees, and other hidden charges. With landlords’ junk fees sometimes adding up to hundreds of dollars each month on top of rent, the junk fee ban is a major win for housing affordability in Washington’s most expensive city. This victory for renters was made possible by UAW members in Local 4121 who helped to elect Seattle mayor Katie Wilson and a slate of progressive candidates committed to improving the lives of the working class. All over the country, UAW members are showing what’s possible when we elect local leaders who are committed to transforming city politics to focus on the needs of the workers, not the billionaire class. UAW members in Region 9 helped elect Zohran Mamdani in New York, and this fall, UAW members in Los Angeles will help elect Nithya Raman mayor of LA.
Bargaining Updates from Around the Region
California State Scientists hold the State accountable for salary raises: CAPS-UAW 1115 members have been holding escalating actions across the state to urge the state government to honor the 2026 salary increases specified in the CAPS-UAW 2024–2027 contract. As revealed in an August Senate Budget subcommittee meeting, CalHR and the Department of Finance made a unilateral decision not to include raises in the CA 2026/27 Budget proposal. Union members have been working hard with allies in the California Senate and State Assembly to right this wrong. Raises were reinstated in the Budget Bill (AB & SB 113) that passed both houses on September 1 and is now headed to Governor Newsom’s desk.
NYFA members ratify first contract: Staff and faculty at NYFA Los Angeles voted 142 to 2 (98.6% yes) to ratify their first-ever union contract, securing an agreement that will make NYFA a better place! Among the many provisions workers won guaranteed severance pay for layoffs, protections against bullying, abuse, discrimination, and harassment, protections from overwork, and more. Now, workers at NYFA are in the process of joining UAW 2103, beginning their membership drive, and getting ready to return to the bargaining table next fall.
CalArts Faculty and Staff ratify first contract: Just as Staff, Regular and Technical Faculty, and Special Faculty at the Calarts were about to take a strike authorization vote over the employer’s unlawful unilateral changes, management finally agreed to a fair Tentative Agreement. The TA includes significant wage increases, a pathway to multiyear appointments for adjunct faculty, improvements to healthcare, and more. Faculty whose appointments were unlawfully reduced to 2 years upon renewal will also be given amended 3 year appointments. Staff and faculty just voted to ratify the agreement in overwhelming numbers: Staff 145 to 3 (98% Yes), Regular and Technical Faculty 93 to 1 (99% Yes), and Special Faculty 174 to 1 (99%). CalArts workers may use this link to join as members.
USC NTT Faculty fight to start bargaining: In June, non-tenure-track faculty at USC voted overwhelmingly to form a union, United Faculty-UAW. Instead of bargaining with them, USC has appealed to Trump’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in an attempt to undo their vote. Faculty and their allies came together for a rally on campus with Nithya Raman, Marissa Roy, and Lola Smallwood-Cuevas to urge USC to do the right thing and come to the bargaining table.
UW Postdocs & Research Staff escalate contract campaign: Members of Local 4121 have been in bargaining for successor agreements for months, and have been facing significant pushback from management on priority issues. After engaging in college-level actions over the last several weeks, members are now organizing for a mass meeting later to continue escalating pressure on administration.
Survey: Changes to F-1/J-1 Duration of Status Policy
Duration of Status policy for F-1 and J-1 visas as of September 15, 2026. This discriminatory policy will cause disruption to international students and scholars and will further complicate the visa renewal process. When this policy change was announced in 2025, UAW International and hundreds of UAW members were among tens of thousands of organizations and individuals submitted comments to the Trump Administration in 2025 in opposition.
As UAW members assess ways to push back against these unfair changes, it’s important to understand how they are impacting or may potentially impact UC workers.
If you are on an F-1 or J-1 visa please fill out this form - your answers will be kept confidential.
September 15 marks the three-year anniversary of the Stand Up Strike against the Big Three automakers in 2023. Today, it is worthwhile to recall the principles that animated the movement. The Stand Up Strike was the next episode in the movement that built our union in the 1930s in a series of Sit-Down Strikes. Then as now, society was fractured by massive inequalities in wealth and economic and political power. The Sit-Down Strikes inaugurated a new form of collective action to fight for workers’ wages and well-being. During the Stand Up actions, UAW members updated our strategies of collective action across the Big 3. With 150,000 autoworkers ready at a moment’s notice to walk out, UAW members won historic contracts that benefit everyone in the auto sector and beyond.
The success of the Stand Up Strike demonstrated the power of collective action to define the issues that matter to workers and pursue them in an effective way. Four core issues emerged from these struggles and continue to unite workers into a movement for a more just and equitable society. Across all sectors, these principles animate our bargaining, organizing, and political action as a movement of working people.
A Livable Wage
Workers deserve fair compensation. For far too long, workers’ wages and well-being have taken a backseat to corporate greed and the financialized economy. The neoliberal ideology of shareholder value extracts from workers’ labor, suppressing wages, stripping benefits, and leaving people unable to afford life’s basics: food, childcare, housing, recreation, and more. The era of shareholder supremacy must come to an end. As workers, we fight for a livable and dignified existence. This includes bargaining for fair, rising pay that outpaces inflation, eliminating divisive tiered wage systems, and securing ample benefits.
But this fight goes beyond wages alone and includes support for public programs that benefit the public at large, such as public education and college, public funding of scientific research, and more. In California, thousands of UAW members took action for several months to pass the California Health and Science Research Bond Act. This measure is an example of legislation that achieves many of our goals simultaneously: it funds research carried out by UAW members; it advances scientific inquiry in cancer and climate research that benefits everyone; and it fosters vibrant and innovative universities and research centers that contribute to everyone’s quality of life.
Universal Health Care
At the bargaining table, we negotiate lower premiums, better co-pays, paid family and sick leave, and more. But our struggle for a politics of care extends beyond the bargaining table: we need to fight for healthcare as a fundamental human right. Healthcare shouldn’t be a corporate-tied luxury. Universal healthcare, such as Medicare for All, is ultimately our goal. Medicare for All is estimated to save 114,000 lives and $1.3 trillion annually compared to our current profit-based system, which rations health according to insurance companies’ bottom lines and CEO’s exorbitant salaries. Moreover, the struggle for Medicare for All frees up bargaining space to fight for better wages and pensions.
And Medicare for All is now a real possibility if we win the midterm elections. It is more popular than ever, with some 64% of Americans in favor of it, and many politicians campaigning to bring it to D.C., such as UAW-endorsed Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and UAW-endorsed Pramilla Jayapal in Washington, who has introduced the Medicare for All Act in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Just & Sustainable Future
At the table we bargain to protect and expand traditional pensions and dependable post-retirement support. Away from the table we need to fight to fully fund public programs like Social Security and reject political attempts to cut benefits or force people to work even longer. Work isn’t everything and people deserve to enjoy their life outside of the workplace. This also means solving the climate crisis so that we have a sustainable planet to enjoy on weekends and in our retirement. This includes fighting the tech oligarchs who are intent on defiling our landscapes, consuming our water and energy, and invading our privacy and peace and quiet with the construction of data centers to run technology that will render us jobless. It also means promoting peace across the globe and ending fossil fuel imperialism so that all workers have a future free from armed conflict and the loss of innocent life.
Time Off the Job
At the bargaining table we need to win control back over workers’ personal time by ending forced overtime, grueling hours, and lives consumed in absurd commute times. Politically, we need to fight to ensure that workers reap the benefits of any technological innovation in productivity by working less for more money.
To help workers and their families live less hectic, more rewarding lives together we must fight for fast and efficient public transit, universal childcare, free lunches in public schools, and much more. As UAW-endorsed Mayor Zohran Mamdani showed in New York City with a pilot program to provide four hours of free babysitting, parents used the time to reconnect with each other. As Mamdani noted, “Making New York City more affordable isn’t just about lowering costs; it’s about giving people back their time.”
The 32 hour work week is one of our important goals. The labor movement pushed for the eight hour work day and the 40 hour work week. It’s time to update the chant “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest and eight hours for what you will” for the twenty-first century. In some countries where workers have already won shorter work weeks, the reactionary forces of capital are pushing back: in Germany, corporate greed is driving a push to repeal the 35 hour work week and reinstate 40 hours without extra pay – all while Mercedes Benz launches a €1 billion ($1.2 billion) share buyback program.
We will not shy from our goal: UAW members will continue to fight to reclaim their lives from work along with allies, such as Senator Bernie Sanders, who has championed legislation to shorten the work week to 32 hours. Indeed, in addition to a 4-day work week, there are a plethora of measures we can take to reclaim our time for living.
Get involved in get-out-the-vote activities this fall to tip the scales for the working class in the upcoming elections. Sign up here to get involved in a race near you.
Upcoming Events
UAW IEB election ballots are out - VOTE TODAY! See above for more info and to request a replacement ballot ASAP if you haven’t received it.
Labor conferences around the country: Contact your Local for more info!
UAW Bargaining and Contract Enforcement Bootcamp, September 20-25, Onaway, MI.
Coalition of Labor Union Women Education Conference, September 24-27, Washington, D.C..
UAW Member Mobilization, September 27-October 2, Onaway, MI.
UAW Standing Committees & EAP Conference, October 4-9, Onaway, MI.
UAW Health and Safety Conference, October 11-16, Onaway, MI