From the president

UAW President Bob King: ‘If anyone is fighting for social and economic justice, we’re going to be there. We are changing the world.”

It is with great humility that I assume the presidency of the United Auto Workers union at this pivotal moment in history.

Seventy-five years ago, our union came into being through the struggle and sacrifice of working people who refused to be second-class citizens. The legendary sit-in strikes of the 1930s achieved union recognition for tens of thousands of nonunion workers. By organizing the unorganized, the UAW created a middle-class society for an entire generation.

The UAW has continued to play a unique role in the American labor movement because of our relentless commitment to social justice for all working people. The social justice challenge before us now cannot be more clear. Hundreds of thousands of workers in the auto industry and in the private sector as a whole do not have the right to join a union and engage in collective bargaining.

For the past three decades, employers have adopted a calculated and fierce de-unionization strategy, resulting in an erosion of our collective bargaining power and the union contracts we have fought for and won over the years. Our members have made sacrifices and concessions that we will not be able to win back unless we are able to organize and build density in those areas where we have lost our power.

We are one union. We are one society, and we are one world. If we don’t stand up and fight for our own membership in every sector and if we don’t stand up and fight for all workers in the world to get fair wages and benefits, we will never have the power we need to win back the things we’ve given up.

As I said in my acceptance speech at the 35th Constitutional Convention, I know that everybody wants back the concessions that we’ve lost. But let’s be clear and let’s be honest and let’s be real leaders. We’re not going to get that back by just saying “no” to the bosses. The way we’re going to get it back is by developing and then implementing comprehensive strategies that rebuild the power of the UAW by giving workers the right to organize.

These comprehensive strategies begin with organizing. Organizing is a human right. It’s a First Amendment right. Free choice cannot take place in a climate of fear. Workers who want a union should not have to risk their jobs to exercise their rights. We are going to fight for workers’ right to organize without terrorism by the boss – without threats of plant closings and firing workers for trying to join a union.

The UAW will rise to the historic challenge of leading the fight to regain the right to organize!

We will demand that both American and foreign-owned corporations respect the rights of workers. We will hold employers accountable for violations of the First Amendment. We will not wait for legislation to ease the way; we will fight with direct action and mobilization just as the founders of the UAW fought.

This is the moment when we must restore the right to organize so that our children and our children’s children will never be second-class citizens again.

I call upon each and every UAW member to join in this generation’s moral quest for social justice.

For a video of King’s acceptance speech at the convention, visit uaw.org/convention.