SAGINAW – More than 1,300 workers at the local Nexteer automotive plant have been locked in with rebellious fervor and resistance against both the United Auto Workers bureaucracy and the capitalists who exploit said workers. At every turn, the state union bureaucracy, in collaboration with Nexteer’s owners, has concocted strategies and subpar contracts in order to keep the Nexteer workers in order.
The Nexteer rebellion has sharpened over the past six months, unfolding amid a broader wave of layoffs that saw nearly 1 million workers fired nationwide in 2025, a direct reflection of the general crisis within U.S. Imperialism. Despite having voted 86% to authorize a strike, UAW went out of its own way to mislead the workers, fill their own salaries and support their bourgeois lifestyle. Before the most recent round, workers rejected two previous sham contracts, in early April and mid-May, respectively, that would have set starting pay at $19.50 an hour and raised pay to $27 an hour for workers with at least 24 months of seniority.
Workers at the automotive plant have been subject to the weaponization of computerized surveillance and enforced speed-ups by their supervisors and managers, all for the intent of extracting as much value from the auto workers while worsening conditions. Even more so, the UAW Competitive Shop/Independent, Parts, Suppliers (CS/IPS) Department held its national conference this year led by bureaucrat Shawn Fain. The conference, a training ground for the U.S. labor aristocracy, held sessions to train labor officials to suppress signs of rebellion among the auto workers, including explicit demands against piecemeal wages, unsafe conditions and management tyranny.
Historically, the growing current of consciousness among Nexteer workers is part of the long tradition of proletarian resistance inside the automotive points of production, against both the companies and the bureaucracy living off the blood, sweat, and tears of the workers. The industrial workers, many of whom were Black, women, and immigrants, have faced demonization from the AFL-CIO, despite the important role of these marginalized workers in social production across the U.S.
Against ruling class narratives of passivity and defeat, the multinational U.S. working class continues to resist impoverishment and the sellout labor bureaucracy that serves imperialism. The masses of workers have also rebelled inside the state unions despite constant suppression, and the Nexteer workers are a direct reflection of the growing militancy within our class at a time of fascistization and political repression by the Old State. The history of struggle and defiant strikes in the hands of the working class serve to inform our task as mass activists, revolutionaries, and progressives to become an active part in class struggle, for it is the multi-national workers who hold the most acute position in the Old society to unite, fight and emancipate itself from the ravages of capital, especially at production itself.
