The following statement was issued by the Nexteer Workers Rank-and-File Committee opposing the victimization of a worker at the Saginaw, Michigan plant who was fired for opposing the fourth pro-company agreement being pushed by the UAW bureaucracy. Contact the Nexteer Workers Rank-and-File Committee at nexteerworkersrfc@gmail.com or text (947) 622-2198.
We, the Nexteer Workers Rank-and-File Committee, condemn the termination of our coworker Antwiane Sanders. Antwiane, a Nexteer worker with more than 10 years on the job, was fired after speaking out against the fourth tentative agreement (TA4) at a roll-out meeting held on company premises. We demand his unconditional and immediate reinstatement with full back pay.
We are issuing this statement to our coworkers and to workers across the auto industry. His firing is a political act carried out by management in direct collusion with the UAW bureaucracy to silence a worker who had the courage to say what the majority of us are thinking.
What was Antwiane’s crime? He said what he thought. Workers have democratic rights. We will not accept dictatorship on the job.
What we know
The roll-out meeting was not held at the UAW Local 699 union hall. It was held inside the plant, in a company conference room. The union officials did the same with the third TA. We know why. At the union hall we are supposed to be able to talk without fear of reprisals by management. In a company conference room, with HR down the hall, we are under the prying eyes of management. And by limiting the roll-outs to around 30 workers at a time, the UAW bureaucrats are doing everything they can to keep us divided and prevent us from seeing our full strength and the scale of the opposition to this contract.
At the meeting, Antwiane — a committed “No” voter — called UAW International Representative Jason Tuck a bum. Last month Tuck, who made $148,476 in 2025, cursed us out and stormed out of a roll-out meeting when we refused to be intimidated into voting for his sellout TA. Antwiane then left and went to the break area to wait for his work group, which was still inside. He was not hiding. He was not disrupting anything. He was waiting to go back to work.
Antwiane said, “I know I did what anyone else would have did and most did — because some people didn’t even go to the meeting. I went to the break area till everybody else came back and went right to work.”
An HR manager was summoned. Antwiane was escorted out of the plant and fired. Reports on the floor say someone on the UAW Bargaining Committee reported Antwiane to management. We cannot yet confirm every detail, and we encourage anyone with direct knowledge to come forward. But the central facts are not in dispute.
As one of our coworkers put it: “It’s collusion. Since when does a union rep go to management and report someone and get this person fired? They are not behind us. If they get away with this, you or me could be next. What are they going to do next? Go after everyone who votes no? This has to be stopped.”
She is right. Every one of us needs to act on it.
The UAW bureaucracy does not represent us
The real job of the union apparatus — not the one in the bylaws, but the one it actually performs — is to keep us in line, to suppress our opposition, to deliver a compliant workforce to Nexteer and its shareholders, concession after concession, year after year.
We have already rejected the contract three times. The bureaucracy has come back with a fourth version that is nearly identical to the ones we turned down. When 86 percent of us voted to authorize a strike, that was not a suggestion. It was an order. They ignored it, buried it, and produced TA4. Now they are doing everything they can to get it ratified before we can organize against it — holding roll-outs on company ground, delaying the vote and firing workers who say “No.”
Workers who asked Local 699 Bargaining Chairman Carl McKee when and where we would be voting on TA4 got the runaround. They were told, “We’re working on it.” As one worker fired back, “We have a place to vote. Our union hall. The same union hall we pay dues for.”
Were the 40 to 50 new hires recently brought into the plant—economically vulnerable and unfamiliar with the years of sellouts—brought in to produce a “Yes” vote the rest of us have refused to deliver? Given what just happened to Antwiane, this question cannot be dismissed.
Our rights don’t end at the plant gate
We will not accept the idea that we surrender our rights when we clock in. The right to speak, to criticize, to call out an official who is failing us — these are not privileges that management or union bureaucrats hand out and take back at will. They are our rights. Calling Tuck a bum is not a firing offense. It is free speech.
Antwiane Sanders worked seven days a week, sometimes 12 hours a day, to make ends meet. He went to the meeting because he cared. The only thing he did wrong, as far as Jason Tuck is concerned, is he refused to be quiet.
This is not the first time a worker has been punished for speaking out. Remember Thomas “TJ” Sabula from the Ford River Rouge complex, suspended after he called Trump a “pedophile protector” during Trump’s tour of the plant in January. It was not the UAW that got him back. It was an outpouring of solidarity from workers and the broader public that forced his reinstatement. Workers organized and refused to be intimidated.
What we are calling for
First: Reinstate Antwiane Sanders immediately, with full back pay and no conditions. He has done nothing wrong.
Second: Recall Jason Tuck. No official who uses management as a weapon against the workers he is supposed to represent belongs in our union.
Third: Support a GoFundMe for Antwiane and his family. No worker should face financial ruin for standing up for all of us.
Fourth: Hold the vote on TA4 early next week — at the union hall where it belongs. Stop the delays! Vote No and organize a strike. We must fight for joint strike action with American Axle, Dana, and the rest of the parts workers, and mobilize Big Three workers alongside us. That is the most powerful way to defend Antwiane and every worker this bureaucracy has in its sights.
The bureaucracy — including Shawn Fain and the International — is openly working with management to extinguish our opposition and push through a company-backed contract that will leave us even further behind than we are today. Our answer is to organize our own strike committee now, in every department and on every shift, so we are ready and we have the power to fight for what we need.
The UAW apparatus has shown us again whose side it is on. We are not going to beg them to do better. We are going to build our own power and fight.