July Newsletter: Building an Independent Working Class Political Movement
Dear UAW Sibling,
In late July, nearly 600 UAW members from Locals and organizing campaigns all across Region 6 came together at Cal State Los Angeles for Summer School 2026 to build skills, make connections, and plot a course for building a powerful working class movement in the coming year. Keep reading to learn more about this ongoing work and other updates from around the Region – and how you can plug in.
Important reminder: Ballots for the UAW International Executive Board elections will be mailed to members later in August. Make sure your contact info is up to date so you receive your ballot: https://myinfo.uaw.org. More info in the section below!
Summer School 2026: Building a Movement by and for Working People
Summer School 2026 was one for the books! Through classes and workshops, members learned from each other, assessed the current political moment, and developed practical skills focused on the three main areas of work we do as a union movement: helping more workers organize, building working class political power, and winning ambitious contract campaigns. UAW International President Shawn Fain and LA Mayoral Candidate Nithya Raman joined, and each gave powerful remarks that situated Region 6 members’ work in the broader fight for economic and social justice.
Left to right:
(Video) UAW President Shawn Fain speaks on the need for a political movement driven by working people - not party elites.
(Video) Region 6 Director Mike Miller discusses the need to organize 56 million people in the US and the role of UAW members in making that happen.
(Video) Check out the first-ever Summer School Kid Organizing Committee!
Building Independent Working Class Political Power
At the end of Summer School, members brought all their new skills, connections, and analysis together to make strategic political action plans for the next six months, including:
Alaska: Elect pro-worker candidate Mary Peltola to US Senate, including through phonebanking and door knocking.
Washington: Build political power for a Washington science bond campaign, including by electing supportive legislators and defending the Washington millionaires’ tax.
Nevada: Build a campus canvassing program to elect Aaron Ford Governor of Nevada and advance organizing priorities.
Northern California, Central Valley, and Bay Area: Elect UAW member Randy Villegas and pro-worker candidate Mai Vang to Congress, including with coordinated canvassing, phonebanking, and voter registration drives.
Los Angeles: Elect Nithya Raman for LA Mayor, including by turning members out to weekly neighborhood canvasses and campus organizing.
Orange County: Expand membership and leadership to build power for workers in municipal politics, including by winning rank choice voting in Irvine and electing former UAW members to office in Aliso Viejo and Costa Mesa.
San Diego: Get out the vote to elect Marni Von Wilpert to Congress and shift political power in Congress to advance pro-worker legislation.
Strategic Comms: Start a Regional Communications Organizing Committee to build a clear working class perspective, combat the billionaires’ narratives, reach more members, and inspire more people to take action.
For decades, the ultra-wealthy have been building a political system that advances their needs – amassing wealth and power off the backs of working people. This includes systematic efforts to weaken unions, which are the most impactful source of collective power working people have to influence politics at the highest levels.
But the one thing the bosses cannot take away from working people is our ability to organize ourselves. According to a 2025 EPI survey, there are 56 million people in the U.S. who would vote to form a union if they had the chance. Just doing that would dramatically improve the politics of the U.S. at every level.
Across Region 6, UAW members and workers on organizing campaigns are building an independent working class political movement to meet the needs of this moment. We don’t rely on political parties – we have a political program, a vision, and a strategy that's our own and that responds to our issues. And as part of this approach, members are building bold campaigns to advance our issues and inspire more people to take action – from science funding to collective bargaining rights to affordable housing and beyond. It's by engaging in the campaigns, engaging the candidates on our issues, doing interviews, talking to our coworkers, our friends, our neighbors, that UAW members are going to build the movement to win on our issues.
It will take every members’ participation to make this a reality – to get involved with political action in your area, fill out this form.
On Sunday, Region 6 members joined a national UAW phone bank to support Abdul El-Sayed for U.S. Senate, who is running on Medicare for All, expanding workers’ rights, and taking on corporate and billionaire power.
Member Takeaways from Summer School
“I learned so many practical skills to bring back to my campaign! I also just love being able to connect with folks in other locals, troubleshooting together, and discussing how we can strengthen our union power.”
“I feel more confident and reinvigorated – I believe even more that we can make a difference.”
“The personal connections made with key people was the best. Building these relationships is something that is unparalleled, and very difficult for me as someone very remote from the region I work in. These connections have set our campaign up for success in a way that would have been far more difficult/nearly impossible to achieve without this.”
“I think I gained the most from the individual conversations and from learning more about the work the union does. My father was a member of the Pipefitters and Welders Union in Las Vegas, so I grew up seeing the strength and importance of union solidarity in his life. His union family truly became part of our family. This experience reminded me of that connection and inspired me to become more involved.”
Organizing Win at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
One thousand Science, Technology, and Engineering Professionals (STEPs) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have won their union! STEPs are a diverse group of professionals who are responsible for supporting the Lab’s research mission through software and systems development, engineering, IT support, safety and environmental health, and facilities management. Yet many struggle with increasing costs of living in the Bay Area, unstable funding, and uncertainty regarding employment stability. STEPs began forming a union last year to improve their working conditions in the face of layoffs, funding cuts, reductions in project scope, and changes to visa policies, and are part of an ever-growing wave of organizing in higher ed, national labs, and other research institutes. Onward!
Region 6 Just Transition Committee
Region 6 members in California are joining the Region 6 Just Transition Committee for a lobby day on August 6th to pass three important bills UAW members have been leading on this year: SB 954 to protect manufacturing workers and support manufacturing organize; AB 713 to enable undocumented students to work at CA state schools; and AB 2516 to build and manufacture the electric grid of the future with union jobs, climate justice, and affordable electricity rates. Find more info and RSVP for the Lobby Day here. No prior lobbying experience required!
UAW International Elections: Update Your Info
This year, UAW members across the country will vote in the quadrennial UAW International Executive Board elections for President, Secretary Treasurer, Vice Presidents, and Regional Directors. Check out the election notice here, and official election rules here. Candidates may choose to send information about their campaign to members through the federal monitor overseeing the election, so you can expect to see more information from candidates in the coming months. These elections are a critical part of our democratic processes as a union, and all members are strongly encouraged to actively participate and closely follow election-related information.
To ensure that you receive your ballot and information about the election, please provide or confirm your mailing and e-mail address information to your Local Union or complete the form on https://myinfo.uaw.org as soon as possible, and advise fellow members to do the same.
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).
Find more information at https://www.uawmonitor.com/elections.
Message from Region 6 Director Mike Miller
In July nearly 600 UAW members from Region 6 met for our fourth annual Summer School at Cal State Los Angeles. Region 6 Summer School is inspired by other social movement education centers, like the Highlander Folk Center, which was founded in 1932 as a place where workers and the oppressed could meet to develop civic and political strategies to improve their lives through collective action. At Region 6’s Summer School, we create a context in which some of the most active worker leaders in the Region come together to share their experiences and learn from each other about how to create a more just and equitable society by helping other workers to organize unions, engaging in independent working class political action, and bargaining collectively to improve working conditions for all.
Workers in Region 6 and around the country face a challenging environment shaped by decades of neoliberal policies. The decline in union density, together with the decline in workers’ wages relative to employers and the billionaire class, has led to a concentration of wealth among the top 0.1%, with negative consequences for us all. As recent Fed research documents, workers today are struggling to make ends meet for less pay, merely surviving as they are faced with rising costs of living, stagnant wages, and limited economic mobility. This is due in no small measure to the greedy plutocracy of billionaires and their elected representatives united to protect and serve their narrow class interests through self-dealing, repressive labor policies, dismantling social welfare programs, and outright plunder of the public purse.
Amidst this return to a political economy of the Gilded Age, UAW members at Region 6 Summer School committed to redoubling our efforts to bring about a just and sustainable future for all workers. Rebuilding the labor movement from the ground up is key to this struggle to take on the billionaires from the shop floor to Washington D.C.
The moment is ripe for concerted worker action. As the Economic Policy Institute has shown, 43% of workers surveyed said they would vote to unionize their workplace if given the opportunity. With roughly 130.2 million wage and salary workers in 2025 who were not represented by a union, that amounts to roughly 56 million workers who are ready to organize right now!
This is our challenge and our aim. Since 2022, 42,225 workers in Region 6 have won recognition – 8,800 in 2026 alone. And with members voting at the Constitutional Convention to dedicate $100 million to new organizing, we will have more resources to organize more workers in more sites and more states. For instance, at Panasonic and Lucid, workers are fighting to make the idea of a just transition a reality: transitioning away from fossil fuels and making sure workers have a voice and seat at the table with their employers.
Time and again, UAW members have demonstrated the power of collective action, from the Sit Down Strikes in the 1930s to the Stand Up and other strikes in the 2020s. When we combine the power of large-scale organizing with mass participation in contract campaigns, UAW members have won historic improvements to wages and benefits across entire sectors. Core to having powerful contract campaigns is having the capacity to use workers’ ultimate weapon: the strike. That’s why members at the Constitutional Convention voted to increase the strike fund to $1.3 billion and increase strike pay to $550/week. Now and in the leadup to May Day 2028, it is critical to continue building powerful campaigns to win and enforce record contracts. Doing so not only improves members’ working conditions, it inspires workers who are not yet part of a union to form one at their workplace.
In addition to organizing more workers and more workplaces and continuing bold and participatory collective bargaining, we must commit to independent working class political action. Now, more than ever, as many electeds pursue endless war – padding the profits of weapons manufacturers while nearly two-thirds of workers live paycheck to paycheck – UAW Region 6 members must build a movement to press our agenda independently of electeds that have too often demonstrated their indifference to workers and the poor. Furthermore, we must elect working class candidates, build independent resources that don’t rely on party politics, and build a coalition of elected representatives who will support our interests – and move them to be champions.
Several of the Region 6 endorsed candidates in Washington state fared well in the primary – including longtime champions Pramila Jayapal, Teresa Mosqueda, Vandana Slatter and Rebecca Saldana. One notable showing was State Senate candidate Eamonn Collins, who has made affordable housing, strong labor rights, and progressive taxation cornerstones of his campaign while running in the politically moderate 42nd district (where Local 4929 student workers have been tirelessly canvassing for him). As of the August 6 vote count Collins is surging to overtake the establishment-backed moderate Democrat in the race (he’s only down by 2 votes!). If this trend continues he will advance to the general and take on Erika Creydt, a Republican candidate campaigning to roll back the millionaires tax that passed in the last session.
And in Michigan, the “indomitable UAW” helped Abdul El-Sayed win that state’s hotly-contested Democratic U.S. Senate primary. He and two other working class champions, U.S. House of Representatives candidates, Will Lawrence and Donavan McKinney, will move to the general election to advance a working class agenda of Medicare for All, affordable housing, a living wage, funding public schools, reigning in data centers and AI, and more.
Upcoming Events
Alaska Primary Elections: August 18
UAW IEB election ballots mailed: on or about August 21. See above for more info and to make sure your contact info is up to date!
UAW Region 6 Retirees Council meeting: September 10, Pico Rivera, CA. A meeting for Region 6 Retiree Council Board members and International Area Council Chairs will be held September 9 at 5:00pm.
Labor conferences around the country: Contact your Local for more info!
UAW Veteran’s Conference, August 9-14, Onaway, MI.
UAW TOP and Women's Conference, August 9-14, Houston, TX.
Union Hall Arts Residency, August 10-September 7, Detroit, MI. UAW members who are selected to participate will be sponsored by the UAW Education Department.
UAW Civil and Human Rights Conference, August 23-28, Onaway, MI.
UAW Bargaining and Contract Enforcement Bootcamp, September 20-25, Onaway, MI.
UAW Member Mobilization, September 27-October 2, Onaway, MI.
UAW Standing Committees & EAP Conference, October 4-9, Onaway, MI.