Fain Rallies 11,000 at Detroit Labor Day March, Backs Benson for Governor

United Auto Workers President stood before a crowd at Roosevelt Park in Detroit today and told union members the November midterms would decide whether working people or the billionaire class come out ahead. Fain endorsed Jocelyn Benson for governor, Abdul El-Sayed for U.S. Senate, Garlin Gilchrist II for secretary of state, and Eli Savit for attorney general, folding his union's political muscle behind a full slate of Michigan Democrats on a day meant to celebrate labor itself. The rally capped Detroit's Labor Day parade, which began at 9 a.m. and traveled from Michigan Avenue and Sixth Street to Roosevelt Park, according to The Detroit News. Metro Detroit AFL-CIO officials estimated attendance at about 11,000 people, and the rally itself started just before 11 a.m. in front of the former Michigan Central Station, now used as Ford Motor Co.'s innovation hub, per the same account. Fain told the crowd, the working class needs leaders who will use government power to strengthen workers against the billionaire class, adding that the moment and November election matter. Democratic candidates marched in the parade but did not address the crowd afterward, the report notes. Benson, currently Michigan's secretary of state, is running to succeed term-limited Governor Gretchen Whitmer. El-Sayed faces Republican former U.S. Representative Mike Rogers for the open Senate seat, while Gilchrist is opposed by Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini and Savit, the Democratic nominee for attorney general, faces Republican Eaton County Prosecutor Doug Lloyd. Rogers told the crowd, according to the same report, that Michigan has a chance to change in the election. Fain's public show of party unity arrived even as his own leadership faces scrutiny. The U.S. Department of Justice opened an investigation in July into allegations that Fain retaliated against UAW Vice President Rich Boyer after Boyer refused to approve financial benefits for Fain's family members, according to The Guardian. The allegations reportedly originated from reports filed by the union's court-appointed federal monitor ahead of this year's UAW officer election. That monitor issued official rules in June for an August mail-ballot election pitting Fain directly against Boyer for the union presidency, as Labor Notes reported. Boyer had previously served as chief negotiator for the union's Stellantis department before Fain stripped him of those duties. Hoodline reported this month that the same federal monitor ordered the Ohio region chief to halt election meddling in a separate dispute tied to the union's 2026 officer elections. The oversight carries a real price tag. The UAW paid $8.3 million in federal monitor costs in 2025 alone, according to its Department of Labor LM-2 filing cited by Labor Relations Ink, pushing total court-ordered monitorship expenses past $25 million over five years. That monitor was established under a 2021 federal consent decree following past UAW corruption scandals. Fain himself was elected UAW president in March 2023 through the union's first-ever direct one member, one vote election, a reform born out of a 2020 federal corruption settlement that replaced the union's old convention-delegate voting system, per WDET. The UAW's political push comes as Michigan's legal landscape around organized labor has shifted. Private-sector unions in the state regained the ability to negotiate union security clauses requiring represented workers to pay dues or agency fees after Michigan's repeal of its 2012 right-to-work law took effect in February 2024, making it the first state in nearly six decades to legislatively overturn such a statute. Michigan's union membership rate stood at 13.0 percent in 2025, representing 566,000 workers and ranking 14th highest among U.S. states, above the national average of 10.0 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — though that figure reflects a decline of 15,000 workers from 2024's 13.4 percent rate. Nationally, the UAW reported total net assets of $1.25 billion at the end of 2025, including $856.9 million held in marketable securities through its strike fund, while representing roughly 375,000 active members, far below the 1.5 million workers the union counted at its 1979 peak, per the World Socialist Web Site. That financial base underwrites campaigns like the one Fain waged Monday, and it dovetails with local manufacturing debates the union has leaned into. In March, Detroit Diesel added a third production shift at its Redford Township complex, a move the UAW publicly credited to federal tariff policies bringing auto jobs back to Michigan, Hoodline previously reported. Benson enters the general election having already made history within her own party. She selected Michigan Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks as her running mate in August, forming the state's first all-female major-party gubernatorial ticket, Hoodline reported. Survey data cited by the Michigan Chronicle last month showed Benson holding an 86% to 12% lead over Republican nominee John James among Black voters in Detroit, a city with roughly 527,000 registered voters. Benson also entered September with a financial advantage, having banked a $5.9 million war chest compared to James's $1.5 million, according to Hoodline's earlier campaign finance coverage. The stakes Fain described extend well beyond Michigan. Republicans currently control the White House and hold narrow majorities in the U.S. Senate and House, while Democrats will try to gain U.S. House seats and hold onto the Senate seat, the Michigan governor's office, the attorney general's office and the secretary of state's office this fall. Donald Trump won Michigan in the 2024 presidential election by a 50%-48% margin. Within Michigan itself, Republicans control the state House while Democrats lead the state Senate, and Michigan is set to hold an early primary in the 2028 presidential nominating contest. Detroit's Labor Day parade traces back to the city's first labor rally in 1884, two years after the first Labor Day was celebrated in New York City in 1882. The parade has drawn national Democratic figures before, including Bill Clinton, who led the 2016 parade, and Gretchen Whitmer, Debbie Dingell and Debbie Stabenow, who helped lead the 2018 march. Kamala Harris told a Detroit rally in 2024 that she wanted new legal protections for labor. The parade was canceled in 2020 and 2022 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But the marquee names have thinned out in recent years. Political consultant Adrian Hemond said the parade no longer seems to be a priority for labor or potential headliners, a comment that reflects the more modest scale of Monday's Democratic-only slate compared to past years' presidential-level appearances. Among today's marchers were rank-and-file workers rather than national stars: 25-year-old Laborers' union construction worker Natasha Piña-Peña, and families like the Sterlings and Hawbakers, including 36-year-old Jon Hawbaker and his 3-year-old son Jayden, along with Gabby Sterling, who marched with her school band. For Fain, the day doubled as both a campaign rally for Democrats up and down the ballot and an implicit answer to the questions swirling around his own union leadership. He cast the November elections, and by extension his own political project, as a fight over whether government power gets used to strengthen workers or protect entrenched wealth — even as his union works through an internal presidential race and a federal investigation that will likely outlast the midterms themselves.