In his speech on the Democratic National Convention’s (DNC) opening night, United Auto Workers (UAW) international president Shawn Fain opened by wishing a good evening “to the people who make this world move: the working class.” The union has endorsed Kamala Harris and on the convention stage, dressed in a T-shirt reading “Trump is a scab,” Fain described the Republican presidential ticket of Donald Trump and J. D. Vance as “two lap dogs for the billionaire class who only serve themselves.”

It’s remarkable rhetoric to hear from a prime-time speaker slot at the DNC, and it elicited raucous applause in the Chicago convention center. But Fain rarely wastes the opportunity presented by a high-profile platform to not only press the union’s vision — fighting for the entire working class — but to move forward organizing goals within the union. Monday night was no exception.

After laying out Trump’s disgraceful record on labor, not only crossing workers’ picket lines but failing to help workers either when General Motors’ (GM) Lordstown, Ohio, plant shut down in 2019, or when the UAW struck GM for forty days the same year — by contrast, Harris walked the GM picket line — he moved to a matter of growing concern among UAW members.

“Corporate greed is alive and well in the auto industry,” Fain said. The union’s historic strike at the Big Three automakers last fall won major gains, he explained; at Stellantis, those wins included the right to strike over product and investment commitments, as well as a commitment to reopen the Belvidere Assembly Plant in Belvidere, Illinois. The indefinite idling of the plant in March 2023 scattered UAW members to other facilities throughout the country. While Stellantis said the closure was for financial reasons, many workers viewed it as an unnecessary move meant to cow the UAW. Its reversal was a priority for the union.

“Through the power of our stand-up strike, we have saved Belvidere,” UAW vice president Rich Boyer said when the commitment to reopening the plant was won last fall. “Eight months ago, Stellantis idled Belvidere Assembly Plant, putting twelve hundred of our members on the street. From the strength of our strike, we are bringing back those jobs and more. Stellantis is reopening the plant and the company will also be adding over a thousand jobs at a new battery plant in Belvidere.”

It’s incredibly rare for a union in the United States to win the right to strike over the company’s investment decisions or the reopening of an idled plant. For decades, amid dwindling worker power, corporate executives have been free to direct company money and resources where they please, ignoring the working-class communities left behind, answerable only to shareholders. The UAW’s Stellantis contract is a major advance for workers, forcing executives to contend with the possibility of worker action as they plan for the future.

Fain claimed from the DNC stage that the company has not held up its end of the bargain. “A year later, one company wants to go back on the commitments in our contract,” he said Monday. “Let me be clear: Stellantis must keep the promises they made to America in our union contract, and the UAW will take whatever action necessary at Stellantis or any other corporation to stand up and hold corporate America accountable.”

The union leader’s decision to train the spotlight on the dispute at Stellantis is no accident: on the day of Fain’s speech, UAW Stellantis locals across the country, representing tens of thousands of workers, filed grievances with the company over its violation of the contract, starting the process of defending the remarkable advances they so recently won. By doing so, they are preparing the ground for a nationwide grievance strike against the owner of Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, and Ram should the company’s intransigence continue. Once the contract’s grievance procedure is exhausted, the union can authorize a strike. According to the Detroit News, the union is preparing for a strike as soon as October of this year.

It’s not only former Belvidere workers affected by Stellantis’s reversal. The company’s actions call into question all other investment commitments it has made, as well as reduce job transfer possibilities for Stellantis workers laid off elsewhere.

The UAW’s grievance states that Stellantis informed the union that “it will not launch the Belvidere Consolidated Mopar Mega Hub in 2024, it will not begin stamping operations for the Belvidere Mega Hub in 2025 and it will not begin production of a midsize truck in Belvidere in 2027.”

“The Company’s failure to plan for, fund and launch these programs constitute a violation of the U.S. Investment letter in the P&M and OC&E Collective Bargaining Agreements,” the grievance continues. “During 2023 National Negotiations the parties agreed to the investment plan for Belvidere to address job security concerns impacting bargaining unit members throughout the entire system. The Company’s failure to honor its commitments in the U.S. Investment letter is a serious concern to all bargaining unit members.”

The union is demanding that Stellantis “rescind its decision to push back the above-referenced launches and immediately plan for and fund the Belvidere investments in order to comply with the agreed upon timeline” for launching the three facilities.

In response, Stellantis said in a statement this week that it is not in violation of the contract, arguing that the contract’s language “expressly allows the Company to modify product investments and employment levels. “Therefore,” the company continued, the union “cannot legally strike over a violation of this letter at this time.”

This morning, Fain attended a rally in Belvidere alongside UAW Region 4 director Brandon Campbell and Local 1268 president Matt Frantzen to further ramp up pressure on the company.

“This isn’t just a local fight or just a union fight,” Campbell said in a statement ahead of the rally. “This is a fight for the dignity of work in America. Union or not, from Belvidere or not.”

“I find a pathetic irony in the fact that Stellantis is now, for the first time, citing ‘market conditions’ as their reason for attempting to break their promises to Belvidere and autoworkers across America,” Fain added. “It’s always ‘market conditions’ when they have to stiff an autoworker or close a plant. It’s never ‘market conditions’ when they want to raise CEO pay by 56 percent. [Stellantis CEO] Carlos Tavares is telling the American autoworker, ‘Market conditions for thee, but not for me.’”

The union is moving quickly. As Fain noted at today’s rally, a Stellantis worker who was a transfer out of Belvidere was killed on the job in Toledo yesterday, which the union leader called “a final indignity to being scattered from your home.” There will be a rally tomorrow, too, this time at Stellantis’s Sterling Heights Assembly Plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, timed to coincide with a planned visit to the facility by Tavares. The reformed UAW, both its members and its leaders, looks less cowed by the day; judging by the reception to Fain’s speech at the DNC, the public is still with them.