UAW President Shawn Fain was among three labor leaders to testify in front of a U.S. Senate committee on Tuesday morning.
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) hearing is called "Standing Up Against Corporate Greed; How Unions are Improving the Lives of Working Families." It featured Fain, Teamsters President Sean O'Brien and AFA-CWA International President Sara Nelson.
It comes a couple of weeks after Fain led the UAW in a strike against the Big Three automakers that eventually led to record tentative agreements that included 25% pay increases, the restoration of the cost-of-living adjustment, increased time off and more.
This year has also been called "the year of the strike" as workers around the country have gone on strike against major companies for better wages. In metro Detroit alone, workers are on strike against Blue Cross Blue Shield and against the three Detroit cas
inos. Other companies that have faced strikes include rail workers, UPS workers, Amazon workers, Kaiser Permanente and more.
According to the Cornell University Labor Action Tracker, there were 69 strikes involving 214,300 workers in September 2023 alone.
“The fight that the trade union movement is waging against corporate greed has everything to do with rebuilding a struggling middle class that was once the envy of the world,” Sanders said in a statement. “Historic union victories won by the UAW, Teamsters, and many others are not only improving the lives of union workers, they are beginning to improve the lives of working families all over America."
