UAW Releases Special Big Three Issue of Its Union Magazine – Free Download Available for Members, Media and the Public

DETROIT – The UAW released a special Big Three issue of the union’s magazine just days before its contracts expire with the three automakers on Sept. 14. The magazine, Solidarity, features profiles of members and retirees fighting to restore the wage and benefit standards that helped build America’s middle class. 

A free PDF of the magazine, Solidarity, is available for download at this link by UAW members, media and the public.

The special issue opens with a letter from UAW President Shawn Fain. “Our members today aren’t asking for the moon, we’re simply asking for our fair share,” Fain writes. “This is our generation’s defining moment. What we win will set the standard not only for our members, but for the entire working class.”

The three member profiles in the magazine tell the stories behind three core demands in bargaining: restoring COLA and fair pay; ending tiers; and stopping plant closures.

• Mike Hall, a UAW member at a GM parts depot in Philadelphia, talks about the toll inflation has taken on his family, and how the union’s call for cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) and fair pay would give them much needed security and stability.

• Sara Schambers, a fourth generation Ford worker in Michigan, tells how the path to prosperity at the company is disappearing. She spent six years as a temp and won’t receive a pension or retiree healthcare, unless the UAW wins them back in this contract.

• Dawn Simms, a member at Stellantis’ recently idled Belvidere Assembly plant in Illinois, was laid off despite the company making a record $12 billion profit in the first half of 2023. She tells how the quest for extreme profits is ripping apart families and ruining communities.

Solidarity also profiles three retirees who have enjoyed a better life due to the pension and healthcare benefits they won with the UAW. But pension payments to the UAW’s Big Three retirees have not increased since 2003. The punishing inflation of the last few years has left many retirees struggling. The UAW is fighting to increase those payments and win justice for retirees.

Ford, GM and Stellantis have the money to meet the union’s demands. They have made a combined quarter-trillion dollars in North American profits over the last decade, and they are all on track to post massive profits in 2023.

The UAW delivered its core economic demands to the automakers in mid-July, but all three companies took more than a month to respond with counterproposals. President Fain has said Sept. 14 is a deadline, not a reference point. The UAW recently raised strike pay to $500 per week per member and has over $825 million in the union strike fund.

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