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By Frank Hammer
Two dramatic changes on the international front occurred at the recent UAW Constitutional Convention held in Detroit June 15-18, 2026 – one standing out way more than the other. What made for the drama was that both came by way of tenacious rank-and-file initiative.
Rank & file convention floor vote
The standout was the vote on the convention floor in the last hour on the convention’s last day to endorse a constitutional by-law change mandating that the UAW will cease holding investments in Israeli bonds. The margin of support was relatively thin – 321 YES to 287 NO delegate votes. The impact promises to be consequential.
The resolution for divestment was first introduced – unsuccessfully – over 50 years ago, at the UAW’s 1974 Constitutional Convention (Los Angeles). It was the work of the UAW Arab Workers Caucus which, in the preceding year, had led a one-day wildcat strike at the historic Dodge Main plant and a downtown protest denouncing UAW President Leonard Woodcock’s ties to a pro-Zionist charity. The clash exposed a huge rift between the International Executive Board (IEB), dominated by the pro-Israel Reuther “Administration” Caucus, and the Arab American workers – and their UAW allies in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, who were committed to Palestinian liberation.
That clash re-emerged in 2014 when University of California Graduate Teaching Assistants, members of UAW Local 2865, voted for their local to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Two years later, the IEB successfully nullified the Local’s decision on the grounds that it was impermissible, antisemitic, and threatened the jobs held by UAW represented workers in the defense industry. (See The Real News interview here).
On the heels of the June 18, 2026 convention vote, divestment became UAW law and immediately won international appreciation, especially from the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions The Federation expressed its gratitude to the UAW convention delegates for voting to “divest the union’s investments from Israel occupation bonds,” and to the activists of both Labor for Palestine and Unite All Workers 4 Democracy UAWD for their work. The latter did months of organizing, winning a few UAW locals’ support for the resolution, and winning enough delegates’ support to advocate for it on the convention floor.
Wind in the UAWD’s sails came mostly from the UAW’s academic and legal aid workers. However, the resolution would not have succeeded had it not been for blocks of “yes” votes cast by two Detroit area Ford manufacturing locals – UAW 600 and 900. They tipped the scales. Though neither Local had submitted a pro-divestment resolution, the moral arguments for divestment – and growing public disenchantment with Israel – carried the day. (See the interview with Olga Karounos, Legal Aid Society UAW Local 2325, Brooklyn, NY and Jay Makled, Ford UAW Local 600, Dearborn, MI). According to sources, President Fain – who voted against divesting during a May, 2024 International Executive Board (IEB) meeting – said he would leave it to the delegates to decide. The report in the UAW’s summary of the day was low keyed:
Delegates voted to allocate funding to the Civil and Human Rights Department and the Women’s Department and voted to divest UAW investments from Israel bonds, among other business items.
Divestment of approximately $400,000 won’t have a significant material impact on Israel’s relentless assaults against the Palestinian people, but signals to U.S. unions and labor movements worldwide that new steps on behalf of Palestine and the Palestinian working class are possible. It also serves to open new channels of communication with and within the UAW rank and file – a great opportunity to carry forward with a new, mind-expanding, internationalist education paradigm.
The leadership leads (!) on behalf of c\Colombian ex-GM workers
The second breakthrough got little notice though it was significant in a different way. The UAW IEB for the first time appealed to the convention delegates to embrace and support the longstanding struggle by the fired injured GM autoworkers who once worked on the assembly line in Colmotores, Colombia.
The struggle by ASOTRECOL – an association of the injured & fired workers (pronounced Ah-S0-tray-col) – had been shunned for over a dozen years by three UAW administrations under Bob King, Dennis Williams, and Gary Jones. The latter two ended their union careers in disgrace, pleading guilty to corruption charges and serving prison time. Under King, UAW-GM Dept. Director Joey Ashton waited a year into the workers’ protest tent encampment before flying to Bogota with GM executives, and that was only after 8 workers were in the 22nd-day of a hunger strike with their lips sewn shut. Nothing came of it, and Ashton and the GM attorneys returned to the States and left the workers to fend for themselves. (Ashton would later get caught up in the corruption scandal as well, and served prison time, too) The ASOTRECOL members did not give up. Though they declined in numbers, they have sustained their encampment to this day; on August 2nd, it will be 15 years. This in a country where tens of thousands of unionists have been routinely murdered, mostly by assassination squads.
Stateside, a multi-faceted solidarity campaign ensued, organized chiefly by a rank & file activist collective, Autoworker Caravan, publicly targeting GM’s brutal employment practices. They were supported by labor, religious, community, and human rights organizations in the U.S. and abroad, among them the Portland Central America Solidarity Committee which featured prominently in materially sustaining the workers. Delegations which included UAW members journeyed to Bogota in solidarity with the workers. The Caravan won UAW Locals to endorse convention resolutions in both 2014 and 2018, calling on the UAW to take up the struggle, to no avail.
And then came the corruption scandal gripping the UAW’s top leadership, resulting in federal intervention. One of the outcomes was an agreement by the UAW to submit to members and retirees the option of direct elections for national and regional leadership instead of leaving the selections to convention delegates. The UAWD, a sequel to the Autoworker Caravan, seized the moment and campaigned for “one member, one vote” and won. Within months, the UAWD was able to field seven candidates for regional and national positions and win all seven. Among them were President Shawn Fain and Vice President Mike Booth, the latter stepping up as the Director of the UAW’s GM Dept. The UAW went on to lead the 40-day “Stand Up Strikes” at the Detroit 3, culminating in successful ratification votes by mid-November 2023.
During the strike there were some of us in the UAWD who carried forward with the work of its International Solidarity Committee in collaboration for a short time with the UAW’s International Affairs Dept. That communication inspired the Dept. to revisit what had become a “cold case.” That, in turn, triggered interest by the UAW in the Colombian ex-GM workers. In April 2024, Fain and Booth broke the 10+ years silence by the former UAW leadership. They sent a letter to GM CEO Mary Barra announcing that the UAW was going to pursue justice for GM’s Colombian workers. They wrote:
It is time for GM to follow through and reconcile with its former production workers. The company must compensate them with a fair settlement in line with their job-related disabilities. We will stand by our ASOTRECOL brothers and their families until this is achieved.
Five months later, Booth reported on this pledge in person to the UAWD’s founding convention. Soon after, the caucus was wracked with internal divisions leading to a split. The group that wanted to dismantle the UAWD rebranded itself Member Action and aligned with Labor Notes. What remained of the UAWD took a more openly ideological approach, advocating “class struggle unionism.” Though both sides had committed to supporting ASOTRECOL, neither were in for the long game and abandoned the campaign. Neither group has publicized what I’ve written here.
The optics from the June Convention are of the union leadership on stage promoting the Colombian ex-GM workers’ struggle to the delegates, while the reformers among the delegates were silent. The UAW included ASOTRECOL’s fight in its convention resolution that was voted on and endorsed by the delegates, showed a 5-minute video about internationalism including a segment about ASOTRECOL (see 3:30), while the International Affairs Dept issued a report of its work, including an entire page about ASOTRECOL. Noteworthy was the delegates’ enthusiastic applause to President Fain’s announcement that the UAW was soon headed to Colombia to assist the ex-GM workers in a scheduled meeting with GM executives. The parties have since met but remain far apart on a resolution. There will be follow-up.
Matters are now more precarious due to the sudden turn to the right with the recent election, by a razor thin margin, of Trump-endorsed presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella. Though the election results are in dispute, Abelardo is set to take power August 7. His ascendancy in Colombia poses grave threats to the broad human and workers’ rights movements in their country. It makes the future of the tent encampment increasingly uncertain and jeopardizes ASOTRECOL’s success.
ASOTRECOL is grateful for the financial help received from the UAW and UAW members, the Brazilian labor federation – CSP Conlutas, the International Autoworkers’ Coordination Council
in Europe, UNIFOR – the Canadian autoworkers’ union, and many others in the global labor movement. ASOTRECOL needs assistance now. Donations can be sent without any extraneous fees via the solidarity website, asotrecol.org. Please donate any amount you can.
As President Fain stated at the convention, “it took GM less than 3 weeks after the end of our ‘Stand Up Strike’ to pay out $10 billion in stock buy backs and dividends to their shareholders. They’ve paid out almost $28 billion since the agreement!” Their naked greed is what is standing in the way of a fair and just agreement. GM and its Wall Street profiteers must be held to account and come to terms with the Colombian ex-workers from whom GM extracted huge profits.
These concrete acts of solidarity with the workers and people of Palestine, and the autoworkers in Colombia serve as profound examples of what solidarity looks like. They took root in the UAW rank and file and blossomed under conditions of greater union democracy. Solidarity Now! Solidarity Forever! Free, Free Palestine! Victory to the ASOTRECOL struggle!
Frank Hammer is a 50+ years labor activist, former President and Chairman of UAW-GM Powertrain Local 909, Warren, MI and a founding member of Unite All Workers for Democracy, UAWD.
