Some UAW members created a stir within their union Monday when Detroit City Council president and mayoral candidate Mary Sheffield posted a flyer inviting UAW members to a Detroit union hall to support her campaign.
The flyer featured the union’s pinwheel logo and the address to the UAW’s Local 7 on Connor Street.
However, the UAW and its leaders already endorsed Sheffield’s opponent, Triumph Church pastor Rev. Solomon Kinloch Jr.
UAW president Shawn Fain rallied with Region 1 and Region 1A leadership last month at the UAW’s Solidarity House on Jefferson, telling the crowd the union would put boots on the ground to support Kinloch’s campaign.
Sheffield’s campaign declined to comment on the creation of the flyer, referring Michigan Chronicle to one of the members behind the effort to support Sheffield. Lynda Jackson of UAW Local 7 said members created the flyer, not the campaign. She said she was emailed by a senior UAW leader instructing them to remove the logo and move the event.
The flyer, shared to Sheffield’s Instagram story, was deleted shortly after Michigan Chronicle reached out to her campaign.
The union members supporting Sheffield will hold the event at her campaign headquarters, Jackson said.
“Members didn’t ask, we felt like we are members of the UAW, so we could use it,” Jackson told Michigan Chronicle. “The idea that Mary or her campaign used the logo is a misconception — she had nothing to do with it.”
But that didn’t stop the UAW and Kinloch’s campaign from criticizing Sheffield for the unauthorized use of the union’s logo.
“The UAW has a member-driven approach to our endorsements. Our members reviewed questionnaires, interviewed candidates, and decided to endorse Solomon Kinloch for Detroit’s next mayor. He reflects the UAW’s values of taking on the corporate, billionaire class and standing up for the working class that’s been left behind,” said UAW Region 1 director LaShawn English. “Mary Sheffield knows this. Yet, the Sheffield campaign decided to improperly use the historic UAW wheel when she did not receive the UAW endorsement—Solomon Kinloch did. Our members are free to vote as they wish, but the Sheffield campaign knows better than to cast confusion about where the UAW stands in the election for Detroit’s next mayor.”
Jackson said she had supported Sheffield’s campaign for mayor before Kinloch announced his campaign in February. She also shed light on the screening and voting process which determined which candidate would receive the union’s endorsement.
“Being at Region 1A, it seemed like a lot of those people were members of (Kinloch’s) church and had a personal relationship with him,” Jackson said. “I had a feeling before the vote that’s the way they were going to lean based on the interactions members had with him before and after he spoke.”
Jackson said members were motivated by Kinloch’s support of the historic Stand Up Strike in 2023, which resulted in higher wages for union members thanks to aggressive negotiation tactics led by Fain.
“It was a big thing about how he supported the strike in 2023, and members from Local 900 and their president was there — they’re out of Wayne, Michigan.”
There are more than 4,000 members among Local 7 and Local 51 — Jackson says some of those members are supporting Sheffield despite their leadership’s endorsement.
“They saw what auto workers for Trump were doing where they were coming here setting up with their banners outside of our plant supporting Trump even though we had endorsed Harris,” Jackson said. “Why can’t we do that for Mary?”
