I'm Will Lehman and I'm running for UAW international president. Stellantis’ Chief Manufacturing Officer Arnaud Deboeuf visited the Warren Truck Assembly Plant in Detroit on Tuesday, to make demands for better quality and lower absenteeism and threatening to remove future work from the factory if the over 5,200 workers there don't comply. In classic form the UAW is not launching a fight against these threats but is instead looking for a way to appease the company.

I call on all workers to oppose this attack on the workers at Warren Truck and mobilize in defense of their jobs. I met with workers at the plant in August and I know that a plant closure or any job cuts will rip away their livelihoods, devastate their families and destroy their neighborhoods. Workers cannot allow this to happen.

Stellantis made a net profit of $7.98 billion in the first half of 2022, up 34 percent compared to the first half of 2021. It paid its CEO, Carlos Tavares, $20.5 million, more than 300 times the average worker, plus a stock package worth some additional $32 million and long-term compensation of about $25 million. It was the workers, including the workers at Warren Truck who produced the wealth, not Tavares, Deboeuf and the other corporate executives.

Ray Curry and the rest of the UAW apparatus are nothing but tools of these corporations, and they are using these threats to extract even more wage and benefit concessions. Stellantis, Ford and GM are already slashing thousands of jobs in the US and internationally, and want to reduce all workers to nothing but low-paid temps.

As I have said before, if the production of electric vehicles requires fewer man hours, this is a reason not to cut jobs, but to reduce the number of hours we work with no loss in pay. That is a socialist and workers’ agenda that I fight for.

To stop the competition between workers to see who is going to work for the worst pay and conditions, and to protect all jobs, we have to build rank-and-file committees to fight layoffs and plant closures. In opposition to the “Buy American” nationalism of the UAW, we have to unite workers across borders and defend all our jobs.

Contact my campaign about forming a rank-and-file committee →