United Auto Workers (UAW) Has More Members in College Than at GM

FrontPage Magazine ^ | Oct 7 2026 | Daniel Greenfield

[texas booster]

A teaching assistant in ethnic studies serves as a unit chair for UAW Local 2865

Unions were always radical, but lately it seems like unions that once represented working people just push woke agendas that have nothing to do with the interests of their members. UAW or the United Auto Workers seems like a prime example.

Well it helps to understand that membership growth isn’t happening in the manufacturing sector, but various elite professions which have taken to unionizing in order to virtue signal and expel political opponents. A more accurate name for the UAW would be the UCA.

Mr. Fain also backed anti-Israel protesters on college campuses, many of whom are UAW members.

While the UAW has struggled to unionize auto plants in the U.S. South, it has had success organizing on college campuses. These include the University of California, California State University, Columbia, Harvard, New York University, the University of Southern California and Penn State.

The UAW claims to represent more than 120,000 workers in higher education, largely graduate students. Incredibly, the UAW has more members at the University of California than it does at General Motors. Last year it organized 24,500 workers at universities. Yet despite those gains, UAW membership overall has shrunk by about 23,000 since 2016.

…the union has added 23 “administrative assistants” and 12 “public relations specialists” since 2020, many of whom make two to three times as much as auto workers.

Course they do. The UAW operates like most leftist activist groups and hires the same interchangeable bunch of activists.

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TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; News/Current Events; US: Michigan
KEYWORDS: danielgreenfield; greenfield; sultanknish; uaw

[texas booster]

A 2023 article noted the academic union members “include graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants, clerical and technical workers, adjunct professors and postdocs.”

This is what the new UAW looks like.

Which is also very cool, to get to follow in that legacy,” says Eliana Buenrostro, a Ph.D. student and teaching assistant in ethnic studies at UC Riverside who also serves as a unit chair for UAW Local 2865.

Buenrostro has seen the power in numbers.

She went on strike with UC grad student workers last fall, winning 46% raises over two years. Now, she’s proud that a portion of her union dues go into the UAW’s strike fund, estimated to be $825 million at the start of the autoworkers’ strike.

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[texas booster]

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam and leftism.

The UAW went from a union that represents workers to a union that represents activist parasites.

A scathing beatdown of UAW, as it follows the money trying to stay relevant in 2026.

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Daniel Greenfield's website: The Sultan Knish blog

[ComputerGuy]

Ethnic Studies

[DCBryan1]

I tell customers that want to buy GM stock: “GM is a healthcare company for their union and now cranking out degrees for employees. They just happen to also make automobiles”.

[AnthonySoprano]

[Paal Gulli]

Collective bargaining is price fixing.

A labor strike is extortion.

Neither is legal at any other strata in the business model but labor unions were expressly exempted from prosecution by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act.

Which was passed by two demoncrat-controlled houses of Congress, signed by a Socialist POTUS, and smiled on by a Progressive-controlled SCOTUS.

And we can never have a true Free-Market Economy again until it’s repealed.

[bert]

The UAW stole my retirement bonds. The UAW had the GM bonds declared worthless and did not pay the dividend due till the abolished perpetuity

GM is failing and lacks the engineering foresight to keep up.

Ratner is the thief who should pay with his very life