The following is a statement by the Nexteer Workers Rank-and-File Committee on the ratification vote the United Auto Workers union plan to hold Thursday and Friday on the fourth sellout agreement the UAW has reached with Nexteer Automotive in Saginaw, Michigan. In an transparent effort to silence opposition, UAW Local 699 officials intend to hold the vote inside the plant where Antwiane Sanders, a worker with more than 10 years, was fired for criticizing UAW International Servicing Rep Jason Tuck during a previous contract rollout meeting. To contact the Nexteer Workers Rank-and-File Committee go to https://tinyurl.com/nexteerrfc. You can also send an email to: nexteerworkersrfc@gmail.com or text: (947) 622-2198.

Local 699 officials have announced that voting on the fourth tentative agreement will take place June 25–26 inside the plant for all active workers. Only those on sick leave, AWS, or laid off will vote at the union hall—with only an eight-hour window.

Holding the vote in the plant is intimidation—a violation of our most basic democratic rights. We must stop it!

At the union hall, we can speak without management looking over our shoulders. Inside the plant, we are under the company’s eye. This is not a union vote; it is a company-supervised operation, agreed to by the UAW apparatus, designed to isolate and intimidate “No” voters.

The firing of our coworker Antwiane Sanders proves what the bureaucracy intends. Antwiane, a worker with more than 10 years on the job, was terminated on June 11 after speaking out at a roll-out meeting on company premises, calling UAW International Rep Jason Tuck—who pulls down $148,476 a year—a “bum.” He then went to the break area to wait for his work group. When he returned, HR was waiting, and he was escorted out of the plant and fired.

This is collusion. A union rep working with management had a worker fired for opposing a contract. If they can do it to Antwiane, they can do it to anyone. Holding the vote in the plant invites the company and the union to identify and target every worker who votes no.

The vote itself is illegitimate. Three nearly identical agreements have already been rejected:

• TA1 — April 2, 2026: Rejected by 96.2 percent.
• TA2 — May 15, 2026: Rejected by 73 percent.
• TA3 — May 29, 2026: Rejected by 55-45 percent.

And what does TA4 offer? As one coworker put it: “The fourth TA is just moving the same money around but making it sound like more. The union boasts that coinsurance will improve from 80-20 to 90-10. What they don’t say is the family deductible has doubled, from $2,000 to $4,000. Unless you have cancer, chemotherapy or multiple surgeries, you will never see a dime of that improvement. It is a shell game.”

The bargaining group’s COLA is a joke. Over the last 20 years, the annual inflation rate for the US has been above 7.5 percent only once—that being in 2022 due to pandemic related disruptions. Simply put, this contract does not give us a cost of living allowance.

The profit sharing proposal is no more legitimate. You have to make a suggestion the company implements in order to qualify and that will be determined by a management and UAW committee. Another fairy tale put out by our bargaining group!

On May 24, we voted by 86 percent to authorize a strike—a mandate, not a suggestion. The bargaining committee’s answer, backed by UAW President Shawn Fain, was to drag back TA4: the same poverty wages, tiers, and absence of job security, and the same $27 an hour in the final year that workers at Saginaw Steering made in 2005. Adjusted for inflation, that 2005 wage is over $45 today. They are offering us a twenty-year pay cut and calling it a raise.

A vote conducted under management’s nose, where “No” voters can be identified and targeted—just like Antwiane—is not a democratic exercise. It is a trap.

What happened since TA3 was rejected

Since the last rejection, the UAW apparatus has worked overtime—not to fight for us, but to contain us. On June 1, roughly 1,000 American Axle workers in Three Rivers struck; the International only allowed it once the company had stockpiled parts, walling the strike off from Nexteer, Dana, and other rebelling parts workers. On June 15, the bureaucracy rammed through a sellout—giving American Axle workers under 48 hours to review 118 pages, threatening replacement for “No” votes—ending the strike just as the UAW Constitutional Convention opened in Detroit. Fain repackaged it as a “great victory.”

At Nexteer? Not a word. While Fain claimed to have fought for parts workers, he and Region 1D Director Steve Dawes never mentioned the 1,700 Nexteer workers who rejected three contracts and voted to strike. The bureaucracy fears a real fight to win back decades of givebacks—negotiated by officials who just voted themselves raises of up to $30,000 at the convention. Starting workers at Nexteer will barely make more than that to live on based on a 40-hour workweek.

Meanwhile, production runs at full throttle, with parts flown to plants in Mexico, Canada, Indiana and Texas. GM Flint Assembly is running six days a week, no summer shutdown, and UAW officials there are authorizing overtime to help the company stockpile against a strike.

The significance of Will Lehman's nomination

At the UAW convention this week, Mack Trucks worker Will Lehman was nominated for UAW president by two delegates—a historic breakthrough. Lehman is not a bureaucrat. He has stood with Nexteer workers from the beginning and called for a “No” vote on every sellout TA. His campaign rests on one principle: transferring power from the overpaid apparatus to the workers on the shop floor. The rebellion against the apparatus is real, and it cannot be contained.

Lehman fights for the unity of workers internationally. Nexteer is shipping parts to plants in Mexico and Canada, using workers across borders against us. Our answer must be the same: we appeal to our brothers and sisters there to join this fight. An injury to one is an injury to all.

Now is the time to strike

Nexteer workers have immense leverage. We produce steering components that feed directly into GM, Ford and Stellantis assembly lines. Under just-in-time production, a strike here would shut down Big Three plants within days—exactly why the bureaucracy is so desperate to force this contract through.

We have already voted to strike by 86 percent—an order from the membership. We do not need permission from Solidarity House. We cannot allow ourselves to be isolated while American Axle workers are sold out and Dana workers have repeatedly rejected UAW-backed deals by margins of 90 percent and more. The answer is joint action—Nexteer, American Axle, Dana, Bridgewater Interiors, Magna and the Big Three plants. Or face the same apparatus, the same playbook, unless we organize independently.

What we demand

No vote in the plant. The vote must be held at the union hall with rank-and-file oversight of the ballot count. Anything less is a fraud.

Reinstate Antwiane Sanders immediately, with full back pay and no conditions. Recall Jason Tuck. No official who uses management to fire a worker belongs in our union.

Reject the fourth TA—the same contract we have already defeated three times. Vote no and prepare to walk out.

An immediate strike. No more extensions, no arbitration—no contract, no work. Strike pay of at least $1,000 a week, drawn from the union’s billion-dollar treasury.

Recall the Local 699 bargaining committee. They have failed three times. Chairman Carl McKee has accepted a transfer into the apprenticeship electrician program—paying $41 an hour by 2030 if TA4 passes, more than one-and-a-half times the top production rate. Other committee members have secured similar transfers. They have a personal financial stake in ratification and are not fighting for us. Replace them with trusted rank-and-file workers, elected by the membership, negotiating in the open.

Build the Nexteer Workers Rank-and-File Committee!

We call on every Nexteer worker to join the RFC, independent of the apparatus and the company, accountable only to the membership.

But we cannot stop at Nexteer. We must expand the RFC to assembly workers, to Dana, American Axle, Bridgewater Interiors, and Magna—every parts worker facing the same sellouts from the same bureaucracy. The fight of one is the fight of all.

We have rejected three contracts and voted to strike. Our position is clear. The workers will become the authority.

Join the Nexteer Workers Rank-and-File Committee today.

Web: https://tinyurl.com/nexteerrfc Email:nexteerworkersrfc@gmail.com Text (947) 622-2198.