Shawn Fain Is Killing It

In office all of 13 months, the United Auto Workers president is transforming American labor. I'll have what he's eating.

Nobody had a better 2023, I wrote last December, than Shawn Fain. The guy only became president of the United Auto Workers in March 2023, but before that year ended he won from the Big Three automakers contracts with 25 percent pay hikes, cost of living increases (reinstated for the first time since 2009), and a 10 percent increase to 401(k) plans. “Foreign automakers operating in the United States (Toyota, Hyundai, etc.) pay their workers about $55 per hour all in,” the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampel scolded in September. How were the Big Three supposed to compete with such nonunion companies when they had to pay those fat raises? By unionizing foreign auto plants. A fantasy, right? Fain just did it in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and he’s got an excellent shot at doing it again next month in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. This coming December I may have to write that, once again, nobody had a better year than Shawn Fain.

My latest New Republic piece is a celebration of Fain’s latest triumph and a meditation on where the GOP gets off pressuring private companies to spurn labor unions even as it claims to be the party of the working class and limited government. You can read it here.