The United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America International Union—also known as the United Automobile Workers (UAW)–is a labor union mainly comprised of American automobile manufacturing employees but that also includes unionized casino and higher education workers.⁴ The union uses this money to push a left-of-center agenda that includes traditional labor union prerogatives, such as replacing secret-ballot unionization elections with public “card check”⁹ The CIO was notable for its staunch political support of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Democratic Party.¹⁰

Homer Martin was elected president of the UAW in April 1936.¹¹ From the late 1930s through the entry of the United States into the Second World War, the UAW used strikes, sit-downs, and other contentious collective actions to force the three major U.S. auto manufacturers (General Motors (GM), Chrysler, and Ford) to enter into the industry’s first union-labor agreements.⁹ In 1943, the communist faction within the UAW “controlled some of the most important posts, including the dictatorship of the union’s Washington office, its research department, and its legal office.”¹¹ According to Boyle, the communists sought to “institutionalize the party’s place in American political life.”¹¹ The UAW’s longtime president, Walter Reuther, was elected on a platform in favor of purging communist influence from the union during the late 1940s and 1950s.¹⁴

Membership

The UAW’s membership peaked at close to 1.5 million in 1979. It has since been on a steady decline. In 2008, the union’s membership fell below 500,000 for the first time since 1941.²⁶

In 2017 the UAW escalated its organizing efforts against several automakers including Nissan and Tesla while waging “a fierce legal battle with Volkswagen.”⁴ In that time, the UAW has disclosed over $17 million worth of federal lobbying expenses. 0){ let parent=divs[divs.length-1].parentNode; let footer=divs[divs.length-1]; delete divs[divs.length-1]; for (let i=2; i